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Encountering Jesus

People need help to find God amid the sufferings, stigmas of mental illness

Ann’s mental illness expressed itself most dramatically during psychotic episodes: ecstasy, followed sharply by despair and terror; tactile hallucinations in which she felt her brain bleed or her skin boil; being oppressed by demons in her weakness; and sleeping just two to three hours a night for six months straight.

Those symptoms led to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

Three people close to her also had mental health challenges, with horrible outcomes: institutionalization in one case and suicide in the others.

“When my psychiatrist first told me I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, it felt like a death sentence,” Ann recalled.

But “instead of receiving a baked casserole, cards or flowers from friends or family,” she said, “I had relationships to mend, a job to beg back, an apartment lease to try to get out of, donated items to retrieve and a cop to apologize to – all because of a psychotic episode.”

It’s been 10 years since she last experienced psychosis, but she still suffers from some of the debilitating effects of her medications, as well as the stigmas and discrimination that go along with mental health issues.

She’s coming to terms with her disease, though, trying to help others with mental illness and learning to hope and trust in God through it all.

Ann is a fictitious name for an Omaha woman who was willing to talk about her experience with mental illness, especially as a faithful Catholic.

The disease can be complex and multifaceted, she said, affecting every aspect of life – even a person’s relationship with God.

“Self-condemnation, scrupulosity, feeling like a failure, loneliness, isolation, suicidal ideation, and despair are some of the most paralyzing feelings,” Ann said, “but I remind myself that all suffering is redemptive and God brings good out of everything.”

The Catholic Church has ministered to people with mental illness since its beginning, but there’s plenty of room for improvement, said Deacon Ed Shoener of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who founded the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers, a lay association of the faithful, and serves as its president.

The Church needs to help break down the stigmas that surround mental illness and provide resources to help bring Jesus to sufferers and their families, he said.

“So often the illness will tell them they’re abandoned by God. And the Church, sadly, in some ways hasn’t been the most welcoming place for people who live with mental health challenges.”

Deacon Ed Shoener of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania ASSOCIATION OF CATHOLIC MENTAL HEALTH MINISTERS

RECOGNIZING A CRISIS

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is trying to do better by recognizing the mental health crisis in the United States and, last year, establishing a National Catholic Mental Health Campaign. The campaign is based on prayer and advocacy for laws and public policy that would improve the lives of those with mental health challenges.

More than one in five adults live with mental illness, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. And half of Americans are expected to have some form of mental illness over the course of a lifetime, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said.

To make matters worse, there’s a shortage of mental healthcare resources and providers across the country.

“We, as Catholics, can and must respond to this challenge with the hope and compassion of our Lord,” said Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, who serves as chairman of the USCCB Committee on Justice and Human Development.

The Archdiocese of Omaha offers help through Catholic Charities of Omaha, which has an array of behavioral health services. The organization provides outpatient therapy, counseling and a host of other services in rural and urban Catholic schools, marriage and family counseling and help with substance abuse.

In September, Catholic Charities and the archdiocese’s Catholic Schools Office held mental health symposiums for educators, recognizing the many mental health issues they face. Archbishop George J. Lucas opened the event with prayer.

Archbishop George J. Lucas addresses a Mental Health Symposium for Catholic school educators on Sept. 13. SUSAN SZALEWSKI/STAFF

Pope Francis, who in the past has received psychiatric help for anxiety, said people need to “caress” their mental health conditions.

“He uses this nice word of ‘caressing,’” Deacon Shoener said. “You have to caress your illnesses and your mental health challenges, learn to live with them,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re a part of you. They don’t go away. So I don’t know if that’s optimistic or pessimistic, but I think it’s realistic to caress them and manage them well.”

“You don’t get down on yourself that you have this illness,” he said. “It’s no moral failing or character flaw.”

In fact, “mental illness is not an impediment to holiness by any means,” the deacon said. Mental health challenges are part of being human, and great saints are believed to have suffered from psychiatric conditions, including St. Oscar Romero with obsessive compulsive disorder; St. Therese of Lisieux with anxiety and Servant of God Dorothy Day with suicidal thoughts.

St. Benedict Joseph Labre, a patron saint for those with mental health challenges, was considered odd and eccentric and possibly suffered from depression. Ann said she’s looked to him for help.

“I always felt alone,” she said, “and I didn’t know what saint to pray to until somebody told me about St. Benedict Joseph Labre.” 

KATIE

Deacon Shoener said he realized a need for improved mental health ministry after his daughter, Katie, died by suicide in 2016.

She had been diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder, which affected her moods and, at times, caused her to become manic and detached from reality. “She’d also get severe bouts of depression,” he said, “and that’s typical of a bipolar disorder, but most of the time she was fine.”

Deacon Shoener and his wife, Ruth, first became aware of Katie’s illness when she was a teen and attempted suicide.

Her parents were bewildered. She had been salutatorian of her high school class, honor society president and captain of her soccer team.

“She appeared to have everything going for her,” Deacon Shoener said. “But fortunately, she didn’t die; we got her into mental health professional care and finally got this diagnosis.”

Her successes continued as she graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a business degree and from Ohio State University with a master’s degree in business.

“She was a very vibrant personality,” who had many friends, her father said.

“Katie stayed away from alcohol and other recreational drugs because the doctors told her they would interfere with her medicines, so she always took that very seriously. But these illnesses are relentless,” Deacon Shoener said.

“The medical care for mental illness is not where it needs to be yet. Hopefully it’ll get there sooner rather than later. But sadly, she died August 3rd, 2016,” at the age of 29.

“I’m sure it was an impulsive act on her part,” he said. “But she was a sweet, beautiful young woman, and we miss her dearly.”

THE BEGINNING OF A MINISTRY

Deacon Shoener decided not to hide the circumstances of Katie’s death.

“When she died, I thought it would be good to write just a simple obituary explaining to our community here in Scranton … what happened, and just to be open about it so that people wouldn’t be wondering what happened to the deacon’s daughter,” he said.

“So I wrote an obituary that simply said she had a mental illness, she died by suicide, but she wasn’t defined by either illness or manner of death. She was a beautiful child of God, and we need to do better at treating mental illness, and that we shouldn’t define people by their illness.

“People often say, well, he’s a schizophrenic, or she’s bipolar. … They don’t see the person, they only see the illness.

“And much to my amazement,” he said, “the obituary went viral because it apparently spoke to what people who live with these illnesses have to live with, the stigma and the discrimination.

“In response, people said the Church needs to do more, the Church needs to provide ministry, needs to support people with mental illness,” the deacon said. “I thought, well I should find out what the Church is doing in this area and join with them to try to build up a ministry within the Church.

“So that’s how I got involved.”

“We all have our personal stories,” Deacon Shoener said of the many people involved in the ministry since its founding in 2019, “where we’ve either been touched by mental illness ourselves or someone we love and are close to have been touched by mental illness.

“We see the need for the Church to accompany people who live with these challenges in a more deliberate way than perhaps the Church has in the past.”

The organization’s aim is to journey with people in their struggles, educate others about mental health disorders and advocate for better psychiatric care and resources.

“We offer spiritual support groups where people can talk about these illnesses and know that they’re not alone and can pray together and invite Christ into their lives as they work with these challenges,” he said. “We do a lot of parish education events to try to break down the stigma and discrimination, and also to give people some basic tools so they have some sense of what these mental illnesses are, to have a mental health literacy.”

“It’s not a complicated ministry,” he said, just one in which people are reassured that they’re loved and that resources are available for them.

“It’s evangelical in the sense that it’s bringing the love of Christ into the lives of people who live with these challenges,” Deacon Shoener said, because so often the illness, especially for people suffering from depression, “might tell them that God doesn’t love them anymore or that they have no purpose or they’re useless.”

HOW TO BEGIN IN YOUR PARISH

The Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers has not been established in Nebraska yet. But starting a ministry is easy, he said. The organization’s website has information, ideas, examples and resources, along with free basic training.

“So what you would do in a rural area in Nebraska, of course, is different than what you do in a neighborhood in the Bronx,” Deacon Shoener said. “You adapt to your circumstances. The basic concepts are the same, of accompanying people, providing them with information and prayer and just being open about mental illnesses and kind of normalizing the discussion of it within the life of the parish community.”

Local mental health ministers could offer spiritual support groups, organize a suicide remembrance or healing Mass, or suggest special intercessory prayers at Mass on occasions like the feast of St. Dymphna, another patron saint for the mentally ill.

Parishes could provide educational events as well, perhaps showing a film about mental health and faith or hosting speakers who could explain certain mental disorders. Free resources are available on the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers website.

“Our hope would be at one point it becomes as basic a ministry as youth ministry or grief support ministry or a prison ministry, just a common ministry that’s offered in hopefully every parish,” Deacon Shoener said.

“We’re always very careful to know our limits, know our boundaries, that we’re not mental health professionals,” he said. “But it’s so helpful just to know that you’re not alone and that you can talk with other people and cry with other people and get that spiritual support of praying together.”

For many of those suffering with mental health challenges, a support group is their main social outlet, Deacon Shoener said.

“These illnesses can isolate you, and you’re not sure how people are going to react if you say, ‘Well, I was in a psychiatric hospital,’ or ‘I attempted suicide,’ or ‘Suicidal thoughts have been really overwhelming lately.’ People don’t know how to react to that. But if you have a spiritual support group where people are familiar with that, they’re not going to recoil in shock or fear.”

Secular support groups are available, but it’s important for people to find that support within the Church, too.

“It’s not just the Church helping them,” the deacon said. “People who live with a mental illness have an awful lot to give back to the Church. They have a deeper understanding of humility and the need to be close to God and rely on our faith.”

“So it goes both ways.”

STIGMAS

“There’s still a tremendous amount of misunderstanding around mental illnesses and mental health challenges,” Deacon Shoener said.

“People are suffering, and it’s still being thrown around as an insult. If people don’t like what you’re saying, they’ll say, ‘Oh, you have a mental illness.’ You hear it all the time in the culture, which is a shame. It’s got to stop.”

“I’m sure many, many people in your parish community are sitting there in the pews living with a mental illness themselves or having a loved one with a mental illness,” he said, “and they don’t want to tell anybody about it because they’re afraid of the judgment and the discrimination that’ll come with it.

“Parents don’t want other people to know their children have a mental illness, worried their children are going to be discriminated against and labeled in a negative way.

“So a big part of what we do in this ministry is at least give people a safe space in these spiritual support groups to talk about this and pray about it and try to realize they’re not alone.

“My personal experience, when Katie came down with bipolar disorder, even though I was a deacon in the Church, there was no place in the Church to go to talk with anybody about this. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew how to comfort me or support me and my family in any way.”

FINDING GOD IN MENTAL AFFLICTION

“A big thing that helped me get through mental illness was when I found out that God didn’t suffer just physically, but that he suffered psychologically, spiritually, emotionally,” Ann said. “That was a God I could relate to.”

Deacon Shoener points to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane as an example of what people with mental illnesses go through, the way He suffered terrible anxiety and was abandoned by friends.

Ann said she’s learned that God has always been with her, even in the worst moments of her schizophrenia, and that He can bring goodness, meaning and purpose out of everything.

“God can overcome everything,” Deacon Shoener said. “God’s the greatest psychologist ever. … He understands what we’re dealing with and can help people to live very holy lives.”

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