[Psycho_Bunny]

You are wrong.

While the pain of a toothache and say - a broken arm - are created via different circumstances, they are both ailments of the physical body.

Likewise, the brain is not a incorporeal, amorphous blob of energy. It is physical: and mental stress on the psyche is a chemical and/or energetic overwhelming of the physical pathways of the brain.

Proving that is no more difficult than taking a benzodiazepine in the midst of an acute panic attack. Like taking Vicodin for a toothache, the chemical helps to alleviate the physical trauma.

I’m not denying that faith is important in mental health, I’m denying that it’s “everything”.

[aruanan]

While the pain of a toothache and say - a broken arm - are created via different circumstances, they are both ailments of the physical body.

Likewise, the brain is not a incorporeal, amorphous blob of energy. It is physical: and mental stress on the psyche is a chemical and/or energetic overwhelming of the physical pathways of the brain.

Proving that is no more difficult than taking a benzodiazepine in the midst of an acute panic attack. Like taking Vicodin for a toothache, the chemical helps to alleviate the physical trauma.

I'm not denying that. Well, actually, neither medication for the toothache nor medication for the panic attack alleviates physical trauma. Both are involved in modifying signaling pathways to reduce the unpleasant feelings induced by the trauma, whether physical (the toothache) or psychic (the panic attack). I was pointing out, and MrEdd seems to have missed it, that the initial cause of PTSD, unlike a toothache, is psychic, not physical. This doesn't mean that there cannot be injury to the brain that results in all the same effects as PTSD nor does it mean that experiences of a sufficiently shocking character cannot result in changes in the brain. After all, simply memorizing a telephone number results in changes in the brain. I was pointing out that what makes something traumatic, as in PTSD, is not its physicality, but the assault it makes on the victim's perception of the world and his place in it. You could have ADHD or you could have TBI-induced ADHD. The first is idiopathic. The second is clearly induced by physical trauma. PTSD is not induced by physical means, either by disease or by accident, but by one's reaction to whatever causes the trauma. Because of this, whatever may induce that disorder in one person may not induce it in another. Someone may have his arms chopped off by a Hutu and never develop PTSD. Another person may. But the difference in developing the disorder or not doesn't lie in the physicality of losing the limbs or not.

[Cvengr]

I’m not denying that faith is important in mental health, I’m denying that it’s “everything”.

We also are not denying physical aid may be required in many situations of healing. Reliance upon mechanisms to change one's thinking independent of faith in Christ places that thinking prior to Him, and misses the mark of what He provides. Worse, it scars the soul, further inhibiting a sanctified thinking process.

Just as the therapy being recommended might 'rebuild' neurological processes, faith in Christ allows God the Holy Spirit to take our thinking and rebuild proper thinking in our souls and our body.

Faith is more than mental health. It is what He provides for our healing in all things.