Dr. Greg Gifford argues that Christians should ask a more basic question before accepting modern mental health categories at face value: What exactly is the difference between the mind and the brain?
In an episode of the Transformed Podcast, Gifford begins a larger series on mental health by laying the groundwork for that distinction. He asks listeners to consider whether modern society is always using adequate categories to describe human problems.
Gifford is Chair of the School of Biblical Studies and Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at The Master’s University, as well as host of the Transformed Podcast. His approach in this episode is explicitly biblical.
Questioning How Mental Illness Is Defined
One of Gifford’s main concerns is the way many mental health conditions are diagnosed. He discusses the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, and notes that diagnoses are often based on patterns of reported or observed symptoms rather than a laboratory test identifying a specific disease process.
He points to criticism of the DSM from within psychiatry, including comments from Thomas Insel and Allen Frances. Gifford uses those criticisms to argue that Christians should not assume every psychiatric label functions in the same way as a diagnosis for a measurable physical disease.
“My goal is not to jettison all mental health and mental illness language,” says Dr. Gifford. Instead, his goal is to help Christians think biblically and carefully about what those labels mean.
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Are Some Reactions Normal Responses to Hard Circumstances?
Gifford also asks whether some experiences labeled as mental illness may sometimes be understandable responses to painful or abnormal events.
He uses grief and post-traumatic stress as examples. A person who has experienced trauma may react strongly to a particular sound, smell, memory, or environment. Their heart rate may increase and fear may return quickly. Gifford asks whether that response is necessarily evidence of disease, or whether it can sometimes be a normal human response to an abnormal experience.
His point is that Christians should be careful not to collapse every emotional, cognitive, or behavioral struggle into a medical category without first considering what kind of problem is actually being described.
How Mental Health Became a Medical Category
In the second half of the episode, Gifford turns to Clifford Whittingham Beers, an early advocate for reform in psychiatric institutions.
Beers experienced severe psychological distress, attempted suicide, and spent time in mental institutions where he endured harsh treatment. After his release, he advocated for better treatment of institutionalized patients and greater attention to what was then called “mental hygiene.”
Gifford argues that Beers also helped popularize a medicalized way of speaking about the mind. The Life Without the Numb study guide likewise presents Beers as an important figure in the movement toward treating problems of the mind through psychiatry and medical terminology.
For Gifford, that shift matters because he believes it contributed to confusion between the physical brain and the immaterial mind.
The Brain Is Physical, but the Mind Is Not
This distinction is the central theme of the episode.
The brain, Gifford explains, is a physical organ. It can be observed, injured, diseased, and medically treated. The mind, however, is understood in his biblical framework as part of the immaterial person.
“The mind cannot get pneumonia,” says Dr. Gifford. His point is that language appropriate for physical organs should not automatically be transferred to the mind.
The study guide develops the same framework, describing the mind as the immaterial part of the inner person and the “seat of cognition.” It argues that confusing the mind with the brain can lead people to approach immaterial problems primarily with physiological treatments.
A Framework for Evaluating Mental Health Care
Gifford does not attempt to settle every mental health question in this episode. Instead, he presents the mind-versus-brain distinction as the foundation for later discussions about diagnoses, medication, and how Christians should respond when they or their children receive a mental health label.
For families evaluating counseling, psychiatric services, or luxury mental health treatment in California, this framework raises practical questions about what a diagnosis is actually describing, what evidence supports it, and whether a proposed treatment is addressing a physical problem, an issue of the inner person, or some combination of the two.
“When you understand what the Bible says about the mind and the brain,” says Dr. Gifford, “all of the other things will begin to be solved for you.”
For listeners, the episode’s central challenge is discernment. Gifford does not tell Christians simply to reject every diagnosis. Instead, he urges them to examine what a diagnosis means and whether modern mental health terminology accurately describes the problem. His larger argument is that Scripture should provide the framework for understanding the inner person, while physical medicine addresses genuinely physical disease.
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Help and healing are possible through our Christian rehab programs.
If you are ready to take the next step and learn more about how a Christian rehab center can aid in your recovery, feel free to reach out to us at any time.