If there’s a tragic indictment of the 20th century, it is this: institutions became addicted to subscription models. Big pharma and the psychiatric fields are major culprits, essentially capitalizing on natural human suffering by calling life’s vagaries identifiable diseases. In effect, chaos and tragedy intrinsic to life-something every human being confronts-became economically systematized.
The manifestations of those circumstances have been increasingly rendered into a proliferating taxonomy of disorders: major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarding disorder, separation anxiety disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, and so forth.
The most pernicious consequence of this medicalization is that many people became to regard their diagnosis not as a description of their struggle, but as the essence of their identity.
This is precisely why Daniel Whitehead’s warning strikes such a resonant note: do not become your diagnosis, he tells me. Daniel, CEO of Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries, has identified something profoundly important in the culture—that people are increasingly encouraged to make their primary identity a clinical label. But a person is never reducible to pathology. You are not the worst thing that has happened to you, nor the name assigned to your pain.
Still, reversing this tendency is no simple task. Labels remain culturally fashionable because they offer something seductive: explanation without responsibility, resignation without transformation. Sadly, the institution that once offered meaning, community, and moral orientation—most notably the church—has, for many, receded in influence over the past several decades.
Daniel’s nonprofit is attempting to address this vacuum. Its aim is to help church communities once again become universal places where people can confront suffering together, rather than merely outsource it to impersonal systems. As he puts it, the hope is that the church might embrace the whole person and become known as the safest place for people in their hour of need. After all, says Daniel, modern medicine often only focuses on symptom reduction, for a problem that is far deeper and complex. “It is a myth that humanity can fix everything on our own.”
While church small groups and Bible studies already provide the venue for believers to pray for one another during the valleys of life, Sanctuary appears to be planting seeds in many perhaps non-believers that faith in Jesus can cure society’s ills. If people can start seeing the church as a gateway to healing, it is at the very least a way to share the good news. 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul says: "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow."
Learn more about Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries here.
Interview coverage:
:55 - Religion is not an evidenced-based approach to mental health though theology was once queen of the sciences. The inspiration to equip the church to support mental health.
5:47 - Modernity has separated the spiritual from anxiety and stress, leaving church goers to see mental health not as natural but as something to hand off to medical professionals.
9:35 - The start of Sanctuary.
10:48 - The rise of the term mental health as a commercial market.
13:45 - Daniel Whitehead’s background as a pastor and why he left.
20:21 - Theological understanding of how to approach the problem of anxiety and depression.
25:00 - How practically speaking, a “relational” theological vision manifests in Sanctuary’s products (a series of courses).
28:40 - What it means to equip people to help others with anxiety. Creating a layer of specialists, such as deacons and elders, or giving all congregants the playbook, filled with the right words, passages and demeanor.
31:30 - The role of the church - the safest place for people to turn to in their hour of need. The dream is mobilizing the church to be what it’s meant to be.
32:30 - Approaching the importance of voluntary suffering.
39:00 - Encouraging both a secular and religious framing of mental health.
40:41 - The rise of mental illness starting in 2012. A reference to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, which draws on Jean Twenge’s work that links social media to the rise of mental disorders.
44:10 - The dangers of social media and the importance of embodiment.
47:07 - The victim/oppressor narrative - false binary - and its impact on mental health.
52:40 - Praxis and its redemptive vision. For Christians only.
57:00 - How Sanctuary makes money.
58:00 - How Sanctuary measures success: demonstrating mental health literacty.
1:02:00 - The definition of mental health literacy.
1:05:00 - Biggest impact and lasting legacy.
