Christianity and Depression

It is now universally accepted that we are experiencing a profound mental health epidemic, and too often Christians have struggled to know how to respond. The need for the church to take mental health issues more seriously is urgent, and this is perhaps especially true when it comes to understanding depression.

Offering a theological and biblical account of depression, this book considers how depression has been understood and interpreted by Christians and how plausible and pastorally helpful these understandings are. It offers an important and well-informed resource for those with, or preparing for, positions of pastoral responsibility within the Christian Church

With a foreword by John Swinton.

Offering a theological and biblical account of depression, 'Christianity and Depression' considers how depression has been understood and interpreted by Christians and how plausible and pastorally helpful these understandings are.
Tasia Scrutton is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Religion at the University of Leeds. She is the author of Thinking through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passibility

This is an exciting, erudite, and important book, one that exhibits deep philosophical and theological insight. The central theme is Christian interpretations of depression, but the relevant issues are linked more generally to philosophical problems of experience, interpretation, and explanation, and the theological reflections are fascinating and original. It is beautifully and sensitively written, accessible to the general reader, and a 'must' for mental health practitioners, philosophers, theologians, and all those who have struggled with depression and sought to make philosophical and theological sense of it.

--Fiona Ellis
Now that mental health has become a matter of public concern, with some high-profile personal testimony and increasing acknowledgement of the social costs, this book brings to bear the skills of an experienced philosopher to expose and combat the theological background of the most damaging assumptions of the causes of mental illness -- such as the lurking fear that it is all your own fault, or that you are possessed by an evil spirit: in pellucid and accessible style this book is an illuminating and often moving contribution to liberating us from the secret grip of such irrational myths.--Revd Dr Fergus Kerr, OP
Tasia Scrutton has given us an excellent and engaging book about how to understand depression. Is depression most fundamentally caused by personal sin or bad personal choices? Is it just a biological illness? Scrutton convincingly argues that these ways of spiritualizing or individualizing depression are not just false, but actively harmful. She instead offers a nuanced--and wholistic--understanding of depression that takes seriously biological, psychological, social, and religious factors. And since, as Scrutton also shows, our lived experiences are shaped by our interpretations of it, how we understand the nature of depression can shape how people experience it. This is an extremely practical book that will benefit not only those who face depression themselves, but also their loved ones, therapists, and religious communities. Redemptive and worthwhile.--Kevin Timpe