Many people suffer a lot in life most people suffer a certain amount it’s inevitable. It’s possible that sometimes it might have the effect of making you change or become more sympathetic was the suffering others but I don’t think that suffering itself should be sought.
On the other hand I don’t believe that emotional suffering is necessarily a sign of mental illness. How many people have suffered broken hearts? Nearly everybody probably in our society at some point but that doesn’t make you mentally ill.
If anything it might really be the inability to tolerate suffering in the form of painful emotions that could cause mental illness.
I have refined you, but not as silver is refined.
Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.”
Isaiah 48:10
How my heart speaks 