Mental illness and spirituality

I WAS happy to learn that a lady celebrity openly threw her support for those suffering mental illness in varying degrees by putting up a foundation. She lost a daughter who, in spite of her high academic and social status and accomplishments, committed a depression-induced suicide.

I hope her example could trigger more support from many other able families with similar experiences, so that this menace can be tackled more effectively.

Cases of mental illness are increasing everywhere. I now know of many of them, and they need not be people far from us. They can be within the family, the clan, neighborhood, the school…

When I was a kid, there was a joke that went around and that made me laugh out loud. The church, it said, would not be complete without a stray dog and a fool present in its activities. And I saw it verified many times in my own experiences.

But now, I don’t laugh at it anymore. It is not a joke. It has become a real, big problem.

The other day, I read in the Internet that nearly 40% of Europeans—about 165 million people—are reported sick of some mental disorder these past years. “Mental disorders have become Europe’s largest health challenge of the 21st century,” said the authors of the study.

Some disorders mentioned in the study are depression, anxiety, insomnia, dementia that lead to a heavy economic and social burden, since the sufferers would be unable to work and relationships are often harmed and broken.

We all need to get our act together to face this very challenging problem. And while the medical field has a lot to do with this, we have to understand that this problem requires a lot of family and community support, and above all, it needs tremendous spiritual help.

Mental illness may have an organic dimension, but it too has a spiritual component. I was happy to learn lately that many doctors are developing what they call as integrative medicine that incorporates some human and spiritual inputs into their work of healing. This should be developed more.

Insofar as the spiritual dimension is concerned, I would say that as a preventive means, we need to clean up our environment of immoral pollution and foster a healthy spiritual and moral life in everyone.

We are having lifestyles that may look happy and prosperous, but are actually empty inside, and therefore vulnerable to psychological diseases. It’s undeniable that we have a big scourge of pretension and hypocrisy afflicting large sectors of society.

I believe that as long as people know how to pray, to value sacrifice, to develop virtues like humility, simplicity, and to work hard, they would be more able to tackle whatever problems and pressures may come that could lead to mental illness.

And when the illness comes, I believe that it is best handled when people go to Christ, just like what those who were sick with all kinds of diseases and even those possessed by evil spirits did.

These disorders require medicine, but they also need going back to God who is the ultimate healer. This is something we should never forget. Otherwise, we can easily fall into the spiral of despair. God offers us hope always, hope that does not defraud us.

And then people should be taught how to suffer, making everyone realize that any pain and suffering we have need not be a completely negative experience. Our suffering in any form can acquire great redeeming value, if lived with Christ, uniting ours with his.

The families and community in general should know how to make adjustments—even to make big sacrifices and drastic changes of lifestyle—to accommodate the needs of those who are sick with mental illness.

Truth is the patients simply need our time, our comforting and reassuring words. They need to be taught how to pray. Just like in the gospel where people brought their relatives and friends who were sick to Jesus, we need to bring our patients to Christ also.

And this can require tremendous effort as shown in the case of the paralytic who was brought to Jesus by his friends. Since the place was already crowded, they had to climb to the roof, bore a hole and lowered the paralytic right in front of Jesus. With such faith, our Lord could not but cure the paralytic.

We can say that this mental illness crisis in the world is an invitation for us to seek Christ. It wants us to develop the appropriate spirituality.