Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - The Mind vs Brain: What Your Therapist Won't Tell You About Mental Health Diagnoses | Greg Gifford and Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

In this eye-opening conversation, biblical counselor Greg Gifford exposes the fundamental lies being told about mental health diagnoses and reveals why Christians need to be more skeptical of secular therapeutic culture.🔍 Key Topics Covered:- Mind vs Brain distinction - why it matters for Christians- How mental health diagnoses work (symptom-based, not medical evidence)- The $40 billion psychotropic drug industry- Biblical alternatives to secular therapy- When medication might be appropriate vs unnecessary- How to approach panic attacks, anxiety, and depression biblically- The sufficiency of Scripture for life's problems📖 About the Book: "Lies My Therapist Told Me" challenges Christians to examine mental health through a biblical lens rather than accepting secular therapeutic ideology without question.💡 Main Takeaways:- Most mental health diagnoses lack verifiable medical evidence- The mind (immaterial) vs brain (material organ) distinction is crucial- Scripture provides sufficient answers for anxiety, depression, and other struggles- Christians should seek medical evaluation but remain biblically grounded🎯 Perfect for: Pastors, biblical counselors, Christians struggling with mental health issues, parents of children being diagnosed with ADHD/anxiety, anyone questioning modern therapeutic cultureWatch VideosVisit the Website Buy Consider the LiliesFollow on Instagram

Here is the weirdness of the mental health secular therapeutic ideology. We're now taking meds and there's no verifiable evidence that this is a medical issue. So you're actually taking meds for the symptoms, not the cause. Basically, a lot of the ways that people are diagnosed today is, I feel this way, I feel this way, I feel this way. Exactly. With no actual scanning of the brain. Exactly.

And then someone says, okay, well, those symptoms line up with this diagnosis. You must have this. Christians have to start to just be a little bit more skeptical because oftentimes we enter into a therapist, counselor, psychiatrist office, and we're just like, tell me about myself. And we leave there thinking about ourself through a therapeutic lens. And I would say Christians, like if the mental health enterprise isn't helping us,

then at least start to ask it the hard questions, like does it know what it's treating? Are these really medical issues? Does the Bible have superior answers or alternatives to what's being said? Like I would start with those three clarifications at least. Greg, thanks again for sitting down. You know, you recently have written a book called Lies My Therapist Told Me, and I thought this is a great title. And why don't you just tell us what the book is about in general? You know, we live in a very therapeutic world. Some of that's necessary. Some of it's been

overdone as you speak to. And I think you do it in a really balanced way. And sometimes that word balance means like the perfect amount of compromise. But I think you've done that in a way that's fair, biblically speaking, that's mindful of the listener and the watcher. So just tell us what the book is about and then maybe let's get to the heart of the message. Yeah, right. Well, thank you. First of all, you were an endorser, so I appreciate your work and time to review it. And the next really big picture idea was, as a professor, one of the things I try to do is not only deal with the methods, which is like the down downstream stuff, like how to do this thing. But the why, where did this come from? Like how did we get here?

Yeah. Yeah. So when we look at the therapeutic culture that we live in, it's the most therapeutic culture of all time. One in five people have a mental illness. And the most common are depression, anxiety, ADHD. $40 billion psychotropic drug. Oh, yeah, with a B.

This is a lot of money that's going into this industry. $40 billion psychotropic drug. Oh, yeah, with a B. Yeah, a billion. This is a lot of money that's going into this industry. So you have more practitioners, psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, training, more programs training them, and yet the problem continues to grow. I mean, it would be like, what if you had another medical doctor,

and as there are more of those medical doctors, the problem of that continued to grow, like more cardiologists, more heart attacks. If you had this ear, nose, throat doctor, and now you have more earaches, like you begin to wonder, like, is this really helping? Like, are we providing a solution? So the therapeutic culture, it's getting to the saturation within America where we're like born into it.

And some of my students here at Masters University, they're born into a therapeutic self-conception where they just, they see themselves as depression. They see themselves as ADHD that they were diagnosed with in junior high. And they're on meds or they've been prescribed meds, whether they're using them or not. And it becomes their self-label.

Oh yeah, like I mean, and sometimes I don't fault because imagine I wasn't told since I was 12 that I had ADHD in all fairness. Like I wasn't told that, but some kids are. So then it's like, I don't blame them for self-conceptualizing and identifying like, I can't do that. I have ADHD. I don't blame them. So I would just begin to think like, how did we get here? Like, how did this even become normal? Yeah. And that led me down this research rabbit hole of saying, where did mental health start? And I found out that it started with a guy named Clifford Whittingham Beers. And he started to use the term mental hygiene. Yeah. And this is back kind of in the dark ages where an insane asylum was kind of like a prison. Like Shutter Island. Yeah, I think of like Shutter Island, like you can't prove you're not insane.

And if you're criminally insane, then it's even worse. So there was these reforms that needed to take place in the asylums. So Clifford Whittingham Beers kind of has this nervous breakdown. He's sent to one of the asylums for three and a half years, bounced around, poor treatment. And when he gets out, he goes on this crusade for mental hygiene. But as I studied his works, he started to confuse the mind and the brain to use medical terminology

when talking about the immaterial mind. So Romans 12, 2, we know this from Awana that we're transformed by the renewal of our mind. Thanks for the Awana reference. I know you probably had the Timothy Awana. We're cadets in Chicago. There is only cadets in Awana.

Oh, you're better than that. Or worse. I don't know how we view that. Who knows? But if you just do a basic overview of the scripture, you notice that the mind is different from the brain. Yeah. From a prevalence perspective in scripture, you know.

That's easy money. Like that's easy hermeneutics. That's a lot of your God's mind and strength in scripture, you know. That's easy money. Like that's easy hermeneutics. That's the Lord your God. It's easy to prove this. Mind and strength of your brain. Right. Explain, go back real quick to the, you know, the mind is immaterial. The brain is material. Your brain is an actual organ.

Yes. Your mind is the functioning of that. So maybe just explain that. Yeah, let's cut that straight. So the original purpose of the book, I was like, guys, here's my great idea. The mind versus the brain. Mind versus brain. Yeah. Oh, really? I was joking, I was like, guys, here's my great idea. The mind versus the brain. Mind versus brain. Oh, really?

I'm joking. They were like, no. Greg, you're an idiot. So I kept writing and they kept refining and they said, what you're really doing is you're trying to address how the secular therapeutic is lying to Christians. You're writing to a Christian audience. And one of the lies is that the mind and the brain are the same thing. And I was kind of like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. So the distinction is that the mind is this seat, this inner person seat of your cognition, your intellect.

And a lot of your reason, intellectual capacities, they're attributed to your mind. Now, I'm not one that would differentiate between your inner person heart or your mind, but in either case, they're immaterial. Yeah. So you can't touch the mind, not to be weird about it, but you can't touch it. Does it even comport to being part of your brain? Not necessarily. It's part of your inner person. So it doesn't mean that my mind is only located in my cranium, whereas your brain is in your cranium. We wouldn't want to, but we could see it. We could have brain surgery on the organ of our brain. So what the mental health enterprise has done is started to confuse, yes, right?

And conflate them, basically. You make them the same. And then you start to use medicalized terminology about the mind. And there's no medical evidence. This is actually a brain issue, number one. But now we're confusing, like, is this a mind issue? Or is this a brain issue? So this murkiness starts to create some weird problems. And the problems lead to how you're diagnosing people for so-called mental illnesses. Because you mentioned it in your book, but basically a lot of the ways that people are diagnosed today is I feel this way, I feel this way, I feel this way. Exactly. With no actual scanning of the brain. Exactly. And then someone says, okay, well that, those symptoms line up

with this diagnosis. you must have this. But just based on how, so I could say, Hey, I feel like I'm X, Y, and Z. I can't sleep at night. Yes. Yes. Do you do this? And you're like, yes. It's like, okay, well you're depressed. But it's not like you're measuring my temperature or monitoring my temperature and saying, Oh,

you're 103 fever. Right. That's a fact. Or you have an abnormal white blood cell count. You have leukemia. Right. Maybe just talk about that because I think that's a huge misconception because sometimes, you know, obviously I wrote a book on anxiety, Consider the Lilies.

That's not written as a biblical counseling resource necessarily. Right. It's written, well, I hope it helps, but it's for the everyday Christian that struggles with worry. I'm focusing on the character of God, but I think a lot of people will respond and say, well, what about the medically anxious? And, you know, I want to try to think through these things from a biblical perspective and scientific, and we're talking mainly just scientific realities right now. Right. So it's not like we're checking that at the door.

Right. And I would say, look, if there is a medical reason for your symptoms of anxiety, then yeah, get those checked out. I mean, just in all practicality, drink a lot of caffeine and watch the way that it makes you feel. You're going to feel anxious. Yeah, don't sleep. Don't feel, Jerry, right? Like insomnia.

Your mind is racing on those occasions. But if there's a medical issue, great, treat it. But if there's no... Definitive. Right, definitive, verifiable explanation that this is a medical issue, then for anxiety, when we're using it in that biblical sense, it's like we're getting back to worry. And where does worry start?

Like this is something in our inner person. Yes. Not our body. Yeah. My body can encourage me to worry for sure, but it can't cause me to worry. You know, if I'm tired, if it's 3 a.m. and I'm not sleeping well, like I can have those inclinations. So the line will always come. We don't always know the mind and the brain distinction.

Like, where did it start? That's going to be one of the mysteries I think we ask the Lord in heaven. But if there's no medical evidence that there's something the matter with my brain, then I really do need to pause and say, and what's going on in my thoughts? And obviously your thoughts can drive elements even chemically. 100%. So let's talk about this because sometimes I think, you know, the rebuttal at this point would be like, well, that's not fair. So talk about, let's take panic attacks, for example. You know, I remember I wrote it in Consider the Lilies. I had never even heard of really a panic attack before I was a camp director.

I remember seeing a girl 14 years old, thought she was having a seizure and convulsing and her sister comes up, pats her, sings her a song and then the girl just gets up and says, at least it wasn't as bad as the one I had yesterday. And she was fine. I was like calling the ambulance, what are we doing here?

And obviously there could be something medically going on there. But talk about even how if you dwell on worry, you dwell on fear, all of those different elements. What's the correlation? Like you said, it's not clear scientifically or biblically. Right. How would you counsel someone that say, well, I struggle with panic attacks? Yeah.

You know, what would be your like biblical counseling advice? And then how does it integrate with maybe something medical? Yeah, good. We would say as biblical counselors, and this isn't like a Greg Gifford thing. This is like any biblical counselor worth their salt. Go to a general practitioner. A real doctor. Go to a real doctor. Go get checkups. Go get lab work. If you want to get all the way into like scan, CT, MRI, like go seek for a medical explanation. And if there's not one, okay,

then we have no, there's no reason to think this is starting in your body or your brain. Let's talk about what you're thinking about when those panic attacks come. And it's funny because in counseling, when a panic attack comes, a person almost always has associated that place with this negative thing, or they have a thought and even a fleeting thought that is passing through their mind and it leads them down this downward spiral of hyperventilation, chest pain, room spinning, and oxygenation to the brain is literally affected by what you were thinking when you were so scared in your mind that the blood flow to your brain is affected because of what was happening in your mind.

So where did it start? Where did the panic attack start? In that case, what started in your mind, you actually was happening in your mind. So where did it start? Where did the panic attack start in that case? Well, it started in your mind. You actually need to renew your mind and come up with a biblical approach to whatever thought that was, that was driving you toward an extreme form of panic. And my two cents is it may feel habituated. It may feel like you can't control it but oftentimes there is a method to why the anxiety got that bad to be the form of panic and it's typically something went through your mind the immaterial mind and this is another example of why the mind-brain distinction is so important because if I just see it all as my brain there's no hope like I have panic attacks and I

need meds yeah I treat my brain but if I can say. Like I have panic attacks and I need meds. Yeah. I treat my brain. But if I can say, like I've tried to argue and lies my therapist told me, if I can say, no, this is actually a mind issue and I need to renew my mind and work on the Lord transforming my mind, then that actually brings freedom from things like panic attacks instead of me having to be on meds the rest of my life. Yeah. You know, you mentioned that there's maybe confusion that's being propagated by the medical community in regards to the conflation of the mind and the brain. Obviously, you know, you wrote a book that's fairly sizable. It's well-researched. There's probably also a burden from maybe misconceptions you see represented in the church, right? So like how maybe pastors or other counselors reflect

and represent these realities of that conflation. Maybe talk more about like, if you're talking to someone in the church, maybe what are some things that maybe they've heard, you know, outside of this even that could have a scriptural underbelly that could maybe be confusing that you would address, that you go, if you've ever heard this, I'd make sure you have this perspective in mind. Because some of the faulty ways of thinking are not just from reading medical journals. It's by reading, you know, a book on

the, you know, devotional. Yeah. I was about to say, you could read some biblical counselors that are putting this forward as if it were just entirely a spiritual issue and fact, and they have proof. So misinformation can come from all directions. That's, I think, why we depend on the scripture as our authority. But at times when people hear this statement, then they immediately leap to, well, you don't believe those things are true then. You don't believe in anxiety or depression or PTSD.

I mean, you're in the military. Yeah, right. That's the next leap. Yeah. And I try to help people then pause and say, okay, we're talking about something that is not verifiably a medical issue, symptom-based diagnosis. As a fact, I mean, that's a scientific medical fact at this point. Yeah, like Google me, double check, how do you diagnose based off the DSM? It's symptom-based verbal diagnosis. Maybe just highlight what DSM is. DSM is like the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders.

And it's used for everything from medical coding and billing to diagnosing of mental illnesses and disorders. So that's just like, that's a fact. Everybody knows that. So there's no medical evidence that you actually have an illness. An illness. So what's a good clarification? Well, if there's no medical evidence, then maybe I should just thoughtfully pause and dissect what's happening with the scripture. Yeah. What does the Bible say about PTSD? And then I'm chunking that,

like I'm doing the hard work of just like chunking that out. What do I do with fear? What do I do with psychomotor agitation? What do I do with insomnia? According to the scripture. So instead of just saying something like, well, no, that doesn't exist. That's what Gifford's saying. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that those are not illnesses of your mind. Your mind can't get an illness

if you're using illness in its normal semantic range. I think that's one clarification. Just pause and say, what is really going on? Let's think about it through the lens of scripture. I think another encouragement is to see the depth of the Bible. Some people have never seen the Bible this deeply. Yeah. It's like, yes, be a missionary. Yes, share the gospel. But I'm struggling with anxiety today. So I need another resource. Yeah. Right. Like, thank you. That's cute. But I need to go to a professional. And some of the quote unquote mental health professionals are actually perpetuating the problem.

We're calling it a medical issue when there's no evidence it's a medical issue. What if we went back to the superiority and sufficiency of God's word and just said like, maybe I don't know the Bible well enough and I need to get schooled up in the Bible, but the Bible has the answers to these types of problems. Second Peter chapter one, verse three and four, that life and godliness, everything I need is in the scripture. So admit maybe that we don't know it, but the Bible does have the answer. You can have confidence that the Bible has answers to depression and anxiety and ADHD and PTSD. So turn that corner as well. And then I think instead of Christianity being on its heels saying like,

no, we're legit. No, we have a reasonable worldview. I think what slowly happens is you start to be skeptical of the mental health ideology. And the next time our junior hires are in class and the teacher wants to test them for ADHD, and you should just begin to say like, well, how the teacher wants to test them for ADHD and you should just begin to say, like, well, how are you going to test them? Like, are you going to do a brain scan? Are you going to do lab work? They just ask them questions like, do you have a short attention span? Sorry, what?

You know, that's the way it goes. Oh, yeah. I mean, I would, I haven't. And they're like, we know you couldn't answer the question. It's like, oh, okay. But is that a medical issue? So Christians have to start to just be a little bit more skeptical because oftentimes we enter into a therapist, counselor, psychiatrist office, and we're just like, tell me about myself. And we leave there thinking about ourself

through a therapeutic lens. And I would say Christians, like you need to be discerning and you need to be skeptical. If the mental health enterprise isn't helping us, then at least start to ask it the hard questions. Like, does it know what it's treating? Are these really medical issues? Does the Bible have superior answers or alternatives to what's being said? Like, I would start with those three clarifications at least. Yeah. And I think it's helpful for even what you said, because I think many people will accuse this

of, you know, us of being imbalanced, you know, but you said, yeah, this, the sufficiency of scripture isn't antithetical to, Hey, go visit your general practitioner, you know, like Richard Baxter, you know, the great Puritan, like, and Martin Lloyd Jones and spiritual depression, where body, soul, and mind, we can't demarcate the physical from the spiritual. God made us embodied beings. Like there is a real bodily element here where that's material and there is an effect, right? But I think the spectrum has swung. And so you're going, yeah, the sufficiency of scripture, and I want to make sure I got this right, speaks to the reality. And I use this in my book, second Peter one, that God's word gives us everything we need pertaining to a life of godliness.

There could be a legit bodily thing that is discoverable and diagnosable by your general practitioner. Even if there was gonna be medication in that regard, it would be maybe to level out the neurological playing field. I think that's Piper's language. Like medication can take you into a position of neutrality,

but it can never take you into a position of active trust. Meaning that the God's will for the life of a believer is not just to not be anxious or to not fear or to not be crippled by panic attacks. God's will for your life is to live a life of trust and dependency and joy. And a medicine or a medication can never do that. It can maybe level out some things.

So maybe talk about the misconception that the sufficiency of scripture means we don't believe in the body anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Because it is like, oh, so like you don't believe in medicine. You probably like pray away in illness. It's like, yeah, let me take chemotherapy. You know, if you have cancer, you're like, inevitably you have to say, okay, mind or brain issue. Like, I mean, do you take meds for something that's not a medical issue?

In all fairness, that's the baseline question. And if you're taking meds and there's no verifiable illness in your body, then even from like a health standpoint, is that the wisest thing to be doing? There's this even movement to depathologize mental illnesses and to come off meds. And most people that are taking meds, they're not super excited about that reality, the costs, the health impacts and so forth. So no, from a Christian worldview,

we accept the use of medicine for medical issues. Absolutely. We got 100%. Like I'll go to the doctor today if I don't feel well. Today? Maybe later. This guy's there, right? He doesn't even wait it out.

He doesn't sleep, no Advil. You know, so of course, but here is the weirdness of the mental health, secular therapeutic ideology. We're now taking meds and there's no verifiable evidence that this is a medical issue. Yeah. So you're actually taking meds for the symptoms, not the cause. Yeah. And you can do that. By the way, biblically, you can do that. I've tried to affirm

God-honoring motivations, legal use in the book. I give those two parameters. Like, yes, you can use psychotropics in a way that honors the Lord. I genuinely do think that's true. But what are you treating? The symptoms. You're not honors the Lord. I genuinely do think that's true. But what are you treating? The symptoms. You're not treating the cause. So if you have a medical issue of your body to include your brain, of course, you're going to get treatment. Of course, like 1 Timothy 5.23, you're using wine for the sake of your stomach and gastrointestinal issues. There is a biblical precedence for this idea of medicine for medical issues. But if you're using psychotropics, you just have to be honest about what they're really doing. They're treating the symptoms of

what's going on. They're not curing you. It's like taking Tylenol. None of us take Tylenol and we think it's eradicating the problem itself. None of us are doing that. We're thinking like, okay, it's alleviating the pain and I need to be mindful of what's going on with that pain. And if that pain increases, I need to deal with the root cause not to continue to take Tylenol in that way. That's the way you're thinking about psychotropics in general. So you're open to using them in a way that honors the Lord and legally, but you're just recognizing their place, their symptom treatment. They're not eradicating the cause of the problem. Yeah. And you mentioned it, and I think it's worth even maybe compounding on for a moment. There is an element where there's an oxidization, there's different things that happen to our brain.

I mean, you'd have to include in this conflation that if you don't exercise and you stare at a screen all day and you eat junk food, you know, it does things to the way that you think, right? So even there's an element of stewarding our bodies, um, that I think is maybe a different conversation for a different time, but it's, it's, it's sometimes can we can spectrum swing, right? Like, Oh, the world's propagating this. We don't believe in the body at all. You know, pray, pray the disease away, which obviously God can answer prayer. So sometimes people swing this way. And I think there's a balance, you know,

that you strike really well in the book. That's really well researched. I mean, I think it's 40 million adults, you know, have general anxiety disorder or, you know, really anxious. I mean, this is not the, you know, peripheral, you know, people. This is everybody. Yeah, right. One in five.

Even in the camping, you know, when I was doing student ministries camping, it's, you know, we have to deliver the meds to the students when they come to camp. I mean, it's so many students from a young age. If it's not medication, it's their vape pens that chills them out. I mean, there's different ways to cope with whatever you're feeling.

And it might not even be medication. It could be vapes. It could be other things. So this is really important. Where can they find your book? Anywhere books are sold. Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Amazon. But I would encourage you to go check out Fortis Institute.

And when you look at Fortis Institute, forward slash lies, that's the easiest place. You'll see different endorsers. You're top of the list. Come on. It's my last time. EA pays off, I think. Yeah. You'll just get to see what people are saying. And then I would encourage people to check out Transform too. And I have a podcast. Right. So there's some just basic lectures from the book that I've done to help be teasers in this way. Yeah. And personally, I don't really listen to many podcasts. But I was texting you yesterday. I plow through yours. I love the material.

I think because you teach through so many of the things that I interact with pastorally at such a practical level and applicable level as you extract from the scripture, I think it's the best, it's the best podcast that like speaks to so many of the subjects that come up, uh, just from a biblical perspective. So yeah, if you're listening, watching, check out Greg Gifford's podcast, uh, transformed with Greg Gifford. Is that what it's called? That's right. Um, it's just on my favorites list. So I forget the name, but, uh, Greg, thanks for just your insight. Thanks for the ways that you approach things. Really helpful. Thank you.