Anthony Evans is an acclaimed Christian singer. He also, however, is someone who has struggled with mental health. Particularly, he says he struggled with poor mental health after he lost loved ones, such as his mother, and had a hard time getting back on track.
Such is what he spoke about in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, saying that he had a severe mental health crisis after the death of his mother, but that therapy and building his mental health alongside spiritual health helped him get back on track.
Beginning, he introduced the therapy topic and explained going to therapy by saying that he was on the verge of losing it after his mom died. “I’ve taken steps in my life via therapy, which I had to,” Evans began. “I mean after all this stuff I was like, ‘I’m about to lose it. Like it’s too much,'” he continued.
He then spoke about how he realized he was at an inflection point and decided to take the tough step of going to therapy, saying, “We all have those points in life where it’s too much. And I had to make a decision, ‘am I going to allow this too much to take me down? Or am I going to do what I can?’ And there were moments where I had where it took everything in me to sit down with my therapist and talk through this stuff.”
Evans went on to talk about how the black community tends to look down on therapy, but he thinks it is important to change that because of the importance of mental and emotional health alongside spiritual health. He said, “I think it’s one of the most important things period as related to culture, but especially in African American culture. It’s harder to stand against it, but the change that we need to see in our culture in general to me comes from you being not only healthy spiritually but mental health, spiritual health and emotional health are all tied together.”
He then spoke about how therapy and focusing on emotional health can serve as a tool alongside prayer, saying, “There’s something in our culture, in faith culture even, that goes like, ‘Uh no – pray – pray harder.’ For some of us and I’m careful when I say this ’cause I don’t want it to sound bad, but for some of us reading ‘be anxious for nothing’ is not enough. We need tools on how to be anxious for nothing. Tools on how to forgive or tools on how to love correctly or tools on how to undo trauma.”
He added, “I had to get almost to the point of a breakdown. I didn’t have to go to the point of almost losing my mind, my career, my ministry to figure out that you needed help. And now I want through the music, through the book When Faith Meets Therapy, I want people to not have to go to the point of breakdown to figure out they need help.”
Featured image credit: By usbotschaftberlin (Elke A. Jung-Wolff) – U.S. Embassy Berlin Celebrates the 243rd Anniversary of Independence of the United States of America, July 2019, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82634642