Can a Christian have clinical depression? God can grant an amazing peace of mind to a person. Many Christians have been totally calm and prayed for their persecutors while being tortured and killed -- like Stephen, the first martyr.

But do all Christians (I mean those who are saved) have the same kind of peace, or any kind of peace at all? I'd thought a Christian can be completely desperate and hopeless, even to the point of committing suicide. I came across an answer with another point of view, which made me question first the answer, then my own views.

What does the Bible say about this, and what do churches teach?
Can a Christian be desperate and hopeless?
What about clinically depressed?
Has anyone thought about Job?
Anyway...Paul wrote to Corinthians; 


  2 Corinthians 1:8-11 (NKJV)
  8  For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. 9  Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, 10  who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us, 11  you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many.   


Certainly Paul was expressing a sense of depression when he wrote that he was "burdened beyond measure" and "above strength". So it would seem that, yes, Christians can be depressed.

We won't know why many of us are burdened to the limits of our endurance until God chooses to enlighten us. There is one scripture, however, that has helped me during dark times. Jesus tells us in Matthew 10:22;
..."But he who endures to the end will be saved."