What is spiritual depression?

Many people suffer from mental or even spiritual depression. Doctors often offer medications to treat the disease. People often hide the symptoms of the disease by using substances such as legal or illegal drugs, alcohol or even food.
Marriages are affected when someone in the family suffers from depression. Children suffer and try to adapt when one of the parents seems to be constantly in this condition. Unfortunately, the disease appears to be inherited.

Depression is revealed in two main forms: reactive and endogenous. Reactive is when feelings run between the emotional sadness triggered by a minor event and the great sadness for the loss of someone close to you. The type known as endogenous is one who continues for no apparent reason to feel this way. Sometimes an imbalance in chemicals causes this condition.

The physical symptoms of depression include sadness, emptiness, abstinence from others, irritability, emotional sensitivity, low motivation and self-esteem and suicidal thoughts (just to name a few).

There is yet another form of depression which is spiritual in nature. Existing as a state of mind, it can come to people when God seems distant or does not listen to them.

In this depressive mood they have lost their zeal for God and the Bible. They seem to become spiritually tired of doing good to others (Galatians 6: 9, 2 Thessalonians 3:13) and ready to give up under the weight of their feelings.

There are cases in the Bible where spiritual depression appears to have occurred. King David was often in this mood and needy of God, as when he wrote the following in Psalm 42.

Why are you downcast, my soul, and groaning inside me? I hope in God, because I will praise him again for the salvation of his face. O my God, my soul is crushed within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of Jordan and the Herons from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep to the sound of your falls; all your waves and waves have hit me (Psalm 42: 5 - 7, HBFV).

Spiritual depression seems too much for David to endure. There is also the example of the prophet Elijah. God through Elijah had a monumental victory over the 450 pagan priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 19). All false prophets were killed and the heart of Israel returned to worship the true God.

Jezebel, wife of King Ahab, heard what happened to Carmel and sent word to Elijah that she would make sure he would die within a day. When he heard the threat, even after the wonderful miracle of Carmel, Elijah decided to run for his life! Traveling to Mount Horeb he complains to God in a state of spiritual depression.

But he (Elijah) himself made a day trip to the desert, and he sat and sat under a broom tree. And he prayed to die, and said, “That's enough! Now, Lord, take my life, because I am no better than my fathers! '(1 Kings 19: 4).

Elijah also complains that he is the only true prophet left alive. God's "cure" for his spiritual malaise was to commit him to do his will again. He was also told that he was NOT the only righteous man left in Israel!

There is also the well-known case of Judas Iscariot. After betraying Jesus to those who hated him, he had a dramatic change of heart. The remorse and depression he experienced spiritually were so severe that it prompted him to commit the maximum expression of self-hatred. He committed suicide .

A possible cure
There is an increasing number of psychologists who believe that one of the main causes of depression (which would also apply to the spiritual type) is negative, demanding and pessimistic thinking. This type of "stinky thinking" helps create an attitude of low self-esteem and self-esteem. A "cure" for this type of problem is the strengthening of the inner conversation.