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Spirituality
The following article originally appeared in Salt of the Earth. It is posted here for private use only. It may not be reprinted in whole or in part without the permission of Claretian Publications.
What's our mission on mental illness?
Thomas Lambert
Speaking to a bishop a few years back, I observed that the church does very little for persons with serious mental illnesses. He disagreed, pointing out that quite a number of church programs are in place for persons who are mentally impaired or developmentally disabled.
His response, unfortunately, proved my point. After I explained that what I meant by mental illness was people who have schizophrenia, manic depression, clinical depression, and personality disorders, this bishop paused and said, "You're right, I can't think of one!"
Brain research in the '90s has helped us learn a number of things about mental illness that helps overcome a societal legacy of misinformation—unfortunately a legacy often sustained by the church. In the Middle Ages the church burned "witches" at the stake—people who exhibited the symptoms that we now understand are part of mental illness.
We know now that a person with mental illness is not possessed by the devil, is not a witch or sorcerer. We know that their illness is not a punishment from God or the result of lack of will power or their parents' sinfulness. We also know that as powerful as prayer is, we need more than prayer to reduce the symptoms of mental illness.
Mental illnesses are diseases of the brain, an organ of the body. The brain, like other organs of the body, can experience dysfunction. As with other diseases, medication can help treat mental illness—along with psychiatric support services and a loving family and community.
People with mental illness and their family members are looking for clarity in the church's response to mental illness. They want to see a moral and ethical response to persons who have such an illness. A pastoral letter from the bishops on this justice issue would provide the leadership and guidance faith communities are looking for.
But that's not all the church has to do. Forty percent of people who experience mental illness first contact their clergy. Most often they encounter little if any help or guidance. The church has to train its people better on how to respond to mental illness.
We know that 30 to 40 percent of homeless and prison populations are persons suffering from mental illness as streets and prisons replace long-term care facilities. As a church community we should be outraged and outspoken about this obvious lack of compassion and justice. The largest number of persons with major persistent mental illnesses are cared for in the homes of family members in communities afflicted by poor insurance coverage, shameful public mental health services, and a pervasive "not in my backyard" mentality.
Many parishioners with mental illness feel abandoned and forgotten instead of embraced and included. They wonder why the stigma and the discrimination that they run into in society is just as strong within the church, a place where they are sometimes still referred to as "bums," "psychos," "loonies," or, worse, not referred to at all. In the many meetings I attend as vice president of the Illinois Alliance for the Mentally Ill, I am often asked by family members of persons with mental illness: "Where is the church? Why doesn't it do something to help?"
One woman recently told me how abandoned she felt when she was hospitalized and no one came to visit her. She knew if she had cancer, heart disease, or a broken leg, she would have been visited by chaplains and ministers of care. But because she was in a psychiatric facility no one came.
When she went back to the parish community she felt she could not share her experience with the priest or anyone else. This all-too-common experience makes persons with mental illness wonder if God loves them because they have been taught that the sign of God's love for them is reflected by their faith community's care for them. Feeling abandoned, persons who have a mental illness become victims of both the illness and of society.
We already know what a more compassionate response could be. In his pastoral letter on Catholic health care, "A Sign of Hope," the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin said: "Jesus helps us to see that he is someone we can trust in the midst of chaos, someone through whom we can be filled with hope in the future. If we trust in Jesus' love for us, all life, even a life of sickness and disability is worthwhile."
The church needs to be a sign of hope to persons with mental illness and their families, supporting them in every possible way with prayer and friendship—welcoming them unconditionally. Parishes need to become better educated on the issues surrounding serious mental illness.
The statistics show that one in every eight families is affected by mental illness. That means in a parish of 800 families, 100 have a need. The church needs to reach out to those families through homilies and prayers of the faithful at Sunday liturgies to show its concern, by visiting and bringing communion to parishioners at mental health facilities, by helping families through the crisis when mental illness strikes, by receiving people discharged from mental health facilities back into the faith community where they may be reluctant to go and inviting them to participate in the life of the church—not as observers but active members.
The church needs to work to change the systems that prevent adequate health-care and community-support services. Vatican II's Gaudium et spes calls us as church to "establish a political, social, and economic order which will to an ever better extent serve [humankind] and help individuals as well as groups to affirm and develop the dignity proper to them."
In living out the gospel imperative, we as church need to demand change through legislation and through advocacy that enable laws and health-care systems that provide persons with mental illness the justice and dignity they deserve. We need to help people with mental illness become part of all our communities.—END© 1997 by Claretian Publications
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