What is the Difference Between Mental and Spiritual Health?
I began to wonder what the differences and similarities are between mental and spiritual health years ago, and wanted to get down to understanding how these different parts of ourselves interact and contribute to one another.
I first began in confusion since in the Catholic/ religious world we’re used to hearing much more about spiritual health— protecting and purifying ourselves from our sins, and turning toward God for healing and growth in closeness to Him. In the “secular” world however the equivalent of having spiritual health basically boils down to taking care of your mental health. Any practice of spirituality (which is 99% of the time Eastern or New Age in philosophy) is only there in order to serve mental health in some way (ex: calming down anxiety through a meditation).
I want to begin by stating that mental and spiritual health are two separate kinds of health that we need to work on equally, but with the right understanding of what it means to be a human person. If there is a fundamental confusion about what it means to be a person, all attempts to understand the invisible and visible parts of man will be equally confused and incomplete. At the same time, mental and spiritual health cannot be separated from each other, just as the human person himself is not divided— no more than the eyes and the mouth can be divided from each other in making up the human face. They are different things, both serving a function that makes up the same whole.
This is Mental Health
Mental health according to mentalhealth.gov is
our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.
Therefore it’s important to include that addressing mental health looks like becoming aware of thought and feeling patterns, addressing underlying habits that are harmful, and tracing those deep dark fears to discover the roots of any disordered mental issues.
I don’t agree with labeling a person as on-par with or identifiable as a mental health condition. I think it creates confusion in the minds of people who wish to recover but perhaps cannot see themselves except “anxious” or “unstable” or some other adjective that describes their mental health at its low point, not the whole individual. While it is absolutely true that mental health has many complex biological and physiological contributing factors, every single human person must struggle with difficult thoughts and feelings in order to grow and be healed. There is no option not to suffer in this fallen world. But it’s how we suffer, and learning management and coping mechanisms for dealing with the sufferings of the mind can set us free of intrusive and unwanted thought and feeling patterns, which may have been practiced for so long that they are our default.
Mental growth is necessary so that we can see ourselves as deserving of a good life, and to remember that our essence is good, and that we are only happiest when we strive to live in harmony with what is just and true.
Remember that mental health is interesting by the very fact that it does more than just measure the brain— it is a study of the mind. That’s why modern science can often fail in so many ways to truly quantify and qualify the complexity of the human mind. It’s why we entertain thought experiments over what it means to be human, and yet often do so with no proof, (ex: gender theory is still after all, a theory about what thing sexuality is).
The goal of mental health should put us back in harmony with our minds and our bodies, being able to own more fully the reality and gift of who we are and how we were created matters.
This is Spiritual Health
Spiritual health, as defined by the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) is as follows:
Parts of health or human existence that cannot be explained from physical, mental or social perspectives. Spiritual health includes a purposeful life, transcendence and actualization of different dimensions and capacities of human beings. Spiritual health creates a balance between physical, psychological and social aspects of human life… Individuals’ feelings about a supreme power, themselves and others.
Spiritual health is tricky to define without the supernatural— in fact I believe more people are inclined to swing back from the other direction that 19th century philosophical atheism took humanity to consider that man is simply an animal that is annihilated at death. Few people actually take to this opinion, and consider that man does have a soul, an invisible, indestructible reality. The definition of your “Supreme Power” differs between Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, wokeism and manifesting, etc.
But for now, let’s just focus on the fact that man having a soul means it also has to be taken care of, and can decline or grow in health. The soul is also sometimes referred to (especially in Sacred Scripture) as the heart.
“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.” (Matthew 12: 34-35, NKJ translation)
The real battle ground for what becomes a person’s thoughts and feelings, what contributes to mental health or breaks it, and what either has the power to calm a person’s emotions or disturb them comes from what happens in our core, the heart.
Spiritual health will always be incomplete if it is vague. That is why growing in “spirituality” outside of faith in Christ just does not or cannot make full sense. Unless you have a “who” to turn to in matters of spirituality, a clear revelation from the divine to tell us about the things of the Deity, there is no path forward, if spirituality is only a thing, a “what,” a force much like gravity that is simply for our manipulation.
The soul only has power to transcend bodily death if it is going toward something that matters, which is why the revelation of who God is and why He sent His Son, and how we must live and die to ourselves like Him in order to be one with Him in love is still the most compelling and reasonable argument to explain why we must meddle with unseen concepts such as spirituality in order to find real satisfaction as persons.
Without a strong spiritual health, which consists of a loving relationship with this God who so loves us, without purifying our image of God into who He is in His actual majesty and infinite Goodness, we cannot know who we are or to what purpose all our days and its sufferings brings.
Adopting A Healthy Balance Between the Pursuit of Mental and Spiritual Health
Now that we’ve gone over a deeper understanding of mental and spiritual health, and how they both have to do with this matter of the invisible part of the person, the soul, I want to advocate for how we can effectively find more healing and more benefit from our mental and spiritual health practices.
It’s not that we have a lack of information or resources in this society to be able to pursue mental health counseling or spiritual books that can really teach us about Christ and transform how we come to Him in prayer.
It’s rather that most of us end up getting confused by the overload of information we receive, and have no idea of where to begin on this matter of trying to build up our joy, resilience and desire to keep fighting our way through this crazy world. Is my problem mental or spiritual? Am I going to see progress in this area, or is this meant to be my cross? Will I ever be able to hold onto a sense of my own worth and stop feeling the background chatter of inadequacy?
Just as the human person is not divided in her body, mind and soul (heart), it is all one thing, so too she is not able to help or harm one area of herself without lifting up or dragging down all the others. We don’t or cannot know all our own complexity, that too is a wonderful gift about how we are made. So the best way to go about furthering the healing process in good faith is to work on both.
Mental health is most easily identified as road blocks, things that are keeping you from happiness and freedom. But what would the “you” look, act, and think like who already knew and possessed a clear mind and peace as a baseline mental state. We know what we want to move away from, but who do we wish to become?
What kind of a person do I choose to become?
How do I react in my thoughts when I experience a problem, as this new person?
What do I feel on a daily basis as a result of being this new, healed person?
On the other hand, we cannot deny that being in right relationship with God makes or breaks the way we will experience life itself. Are we skeptical of God’s existence and or love for us? Do we find it difficult to come to believe that there can be one spiritual truth, what with so many people claiming to know what is true, and yet behind every organization that stands for the truth there lurks hypocrisy and evil? Can we separate human folly from the Goodness of God? Can we still trust that God works through and entrusts His grace to act through broken people, broken as ourselves?
Spiritual health is achieved by rooting out sin and replacing them with virtues, but we cannot do this alone. This is why we need leaders— teachers, like a confessor, a work written by a saint, and in a powerful way, Sacred Scripture. We also must grow in spirituality together in our families (even if you are the only one setting the example to pray), our faith communities (finding a parish that you seek much more to “give” to rather than “get” from), and of course recourse to greater knowledge of what God has revealed to us about our human nature, our worth, our story, and the purpose to which all of us tend (I enjoy the Catechism the most for this).
Spirituality from any other source can teach you something of God but not the fullness of the Truth. No other story or claim of faith besides God becoming man as Jesus Christ has the same power to explain and forge the purpose of human life.
Spiritual health is identified also by a “roadblock” only of a different kind— a bothered conscience. The gift of conscience calls us to repentance and right relationship with God. It is not simply a negative tool to make us feel bad or guilty. Conscience is a beautiful song in the soul that calls God’s children back to His side with confidence and trust, knowing that only compassion and mercy awaits in this God.
Similarly to mental health, we know when something goes “wrong” in the spiritual life more than when we know that something is going “right.” For example, we can become discouraged if we no longer feel God in prayer, and can question the very legitimacy of prayer and if God is really listening to us. Once again, we must positively frame our spiritual health, and dream about who we wish to become.
What kind of a person do I choose to become?
How do I react in my prayer life when I experience a problem, as this new person?
What do I do on a daily basis to protect and grow my relationship with God?