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@eden-anderson

I’m not sure there’s much for me to say, since I personally am pretty uninformed. But I think that in Christian fiction, mental disorders can come alongside spiritual issues, and perhaps a character struggles with both. I say this out of a struggle a few years ago when a period of irrational fears turned into a real soul-searching time that revealed a lot of the doubts that I had towards God. Did I, in the end, have to put my faith in God? Yes, and that struggle for me is a great testimony of how God protected me and led me towards Him. But was there a definite psychological aspect? Yes! Even when I knew the truth about Jesus, it still took several emotionally warped months for me to finally feel better, and the same thoughts kept happening occasionally for the next two years. I think that psychologically, things that influence our thoughts and emotions aren’t always easy to understand, but when they do surface, they can exacerbate our spiritual struggles.

Echoing what everybody else has said, we do need to understand that medically there is a lot going on in people’s lives besides their sin, be it emotionally or mentally. Displaying that in all its complexity is an important direction for Christian fiction to take.