Have you ever had a moment when you’ve been so sick you can’t get out of bed? Or when you feel sick to your stomach but there’s nothing you do can cure yourself? Mental illness is different from bodily illness because while we still don’t fully understand it we don’t fully know how to treat those who have it? Sometimes people don’t take the mental ill on the same level as they do with some sicknesses. We let those people know that everyone has those kinds of down days or that there are people who have it worse out in the world. We tell these people that we’ll pray for them and maybe it will all be better for them if they get out and do their favorite thing that brings them joy! However, sometimes those things that bring joy? They don’t change the way that people feel on the inside.

Back to praying for them, sometimes the person just needs more than prayer, sometimes we need to know that someone will just fully listen before they give us the cure of prayer. Doctors don’t just listen to two of symptoms that patients has before they tell the person what illness they have, if all doctors did that they would misdiagnose patients all the time, however when it comes to the mentally ill as patients and us as doctors, we just like to hear the “key” words and then tell the person how they can be cured and tell them to come back when they feel better. We also talk about people who are mentally ill like they’re weak that what they’re dealing with is nothing but them losing a battle to feelings or just people on Tumblr wanting to be like everyone else in the world and just wanting to make safe spaces for the feelings that could get hurt by us saying mean things to them. While that may be true to some of them, it’s not true to all. You wouldn’t make someone who has PTSD about past child abuse watch a movie where a child gets hurt by a parent, would you? The thing is for some people, maybe you can pray away the illness, maybe one day they’ll wake up and God healed them from this dark prison, however for others, like myself, it isn’t something a quick group prayer can fix or a couple of Bible verses, sometimes you just need to listen to the person pour out their heart about what is going on in their life, and then tell them that they have support and friends behind them willing to help them through everything that is going on, before you move on to cure it with prayer. It would be amazing if we could stop every bad thing that may happen if someone doesn't get the help that they need before they try to fix it themselves, maybe putting others lives in danger, because one or more hours of just listening to someone talk to you about how they feel inside, is better than one hour standing by a grave trying to think about what you could have done to stop them from going too far.