It both breaks my heart and fills it with rage as I see just how terrible many Christians are at approaching the issue of mental illness. Just like the rest of the world, many of us have the opinion "if I can't see it, it's not real". But Christians are often worse than the world in this regard. The first reason for this is that the eyes of the world are on us. If we handle mental illness incorrectly, the world sees that. Do we really need to give them the excuse to see us as ignorant of science? Is it helpful to give them one more reason to call us hateful bigots?
But what makes us worse is that we try to use God to justify it. If you're depressed, you're supposedly not grateful to Him. If you're anxious, you're apparently not faithful enough to Him. If you're an introvert because of these (or even for some other reason), it's said that you're not obeying Him. But none of that is true.
The Bible does contain several commands to be content, and exhortations to be joyful in all things. It does tell us to fear not, and cast our worries upon Him. It does tell us not to neglect fellowship with each other. Know what it doesn't say? That the inability to do these things is somehow your fault.
Another thing the Bible talks about is work. Work which, back then, was almost purely physical. Construction, agriculture, military, that sort of thing. Work which you probably could not do if you were crippled or worse. So, although Paul said "...if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10), what kind of fool would say to a quadriplegic "you don't work, therefore you're not faithful to God"? The blind, the lame, the deaf, all of these disabilities, and more, hinder a person's ability to work, and while there are jobs today that even many disabled people can do, any Christian caught lecturing a person in a wheelchair about how they're only in it because they're not praying hard enough, put frankly, should be immediately disfellowshipped until they repent.
You see, then, that faith does not override physical barriers, it simply makes it easier to work around them. What's more is that these physical barriers are worked around by the mindset to do so. But what far too many Christians don't realise is that mental illness is one such physical barrier. But it isn't a fault in the legs or the arms. Mental illness affects the most important body part of them all: The brain. Just as drugs or alcohol affect the mindset, so also does mental illness, but without the sin leading up to it. A foolish person may get drunk one night and be sober the next day, but a mentally ill person does not have the luxury of choice. Thus, whether they be bipolar, depressed, paranoid, autistic, or even full blown schizophrenic, they deserve the exact same compassion we would give any other sick person.
To those in the Church who have encountered such arrogant people who assume your faith is weak because you suffer with some form of mental illness, I want to disarm their claims. I want to assure you, you are not a lesser Christian because of your illness, nor is your illness the result of you being a lesser Christian. You can even glorify God in more ways than a "normie" can. Don't let them put you down. Rather, let Jesus build you up, and forgive those who look down on you, because they have a bigger problem than you do. As Scripture says, "...be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble." (1 Peter 5:5; cf. James 4:6).