Title: How Catholics struggle with mental illness | U.S. Catholic
Headings: Through a glass darkly: How Catholics struggle with mental illness
Through a glass darkly: How Catholics struggle with mental illness
Mental illness is still murky territory for those who experience it, their families, and their church.
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Content: “It is way easier to build a ramp than it is to deal with a person who comes to church talking to herself, which might be a manifestation of some of the more severe symptoms of mental illness,” she says. “ I don’t think that the church is ready for that yet.” Recent Baylor University studies reflect this attitude. A 2008 study showed that almost one-third of a group of 293 Christians who approached their various churches about mental illness were told that they or their family member didn’t really have a mental disorder. A 2009 Baylor survey of Texas Baptists found depression and anxiety were the maladies most often dismissed by clergy. Repeated studies have also shown that it is clergy to whom people most frequently turn when they are first in mental distress, not mental health professionals. Like many working in Catholic mental illness advocacy, Lambert, the deacon from Chicago, has a personal connection to mental illness. His daughter was diagnosed with a serious mental illness 20 years ago, and he and his wife first sought resources through the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a leading nonprofit organization that was founded in 1972. “NAMI recognized that churches are a natural ally,” he says. “ Churches understand compassion.