Is the mental health crisis because…

Question: Is the mental health crisis because:

1) our culture is more aware/open about mental health issues so more people are getting help, overwhelming current resources?

Or, 2) our culture has raised the bar of social success so high that just about everyone feels they are failing (causing mental health issues needing attention)?

I generally hear from those in the church, who are coming out of a theological framework that eschews therapy, that it is #1.

But I read secular critics (who are psychologists and therapists) who think it is #2.

I bring this up to remind us of our social location, especially Christians who rightly want to make room in the church for being trauma-informed. The evangelical-fundamentalist church does need more mental health resources. But that is a subset of a larger cultural phenomenon.

So, we can still offer a critique of therapeutic culture—its values and assumptions…even its alternative gospel—by listening to secular critics of the sociological phenomena beyond the church.