title: Saint Dymphna: A Saint Who Brings Consoling Light to All - Especially to the Nervous and the Mentally Handicapped
author: Lawrence G. Lovasik
description: For more than a thousand years St. Dymphna has brought light and contentment to victims of the saddest of human afflictions - nervous and mental disease. The inspiring story of the virgin-martyr, St. Dymphna, and the thirteen-century-old tradition surrounding her shrine has pointed to the fact that she is truly the friend and advocate of those who are emotionally and mentally ill, and of all those who are responsible for their care. If God, in his loving Providence, has mercifully aided thousands of the afflicted through her inter cession through thirteen centuries, He is certainly anxious to continue doing so especially in these times when mental disease has taken such a strong hold on humanity.
zlib_text: StDymphna
  Patron of the
  Nervous and Emotionally Disturbed
  
  Digitized by the Internet Archive
  in 2016
  https://archive.org/details/saintdymphnapatrOOIova
  
  Saint Dymphna
  Patron
  of the Nervous and
  Emotionally
  Disturbed
  By
  REV. LAWRENCE G. LOVASIK, S.V.D.
  Divine Word Missionary
  Sixth Printing
  100th Thousand
  1961
  DIVINE WORD PUBLICATIONS
  TECHNY, ILLINOIS
  
  FOREWORD
  The most serious medical problem facing
  our nation
  is that presented by nervous and
  mental
  diseases.
  About
  eight
  million
  per-
  sons
  are
  thus
  afflicted.
  One
  out
  of
  every
  twenty persons in the United States
  is emo-
  tionally or mentally maladjusted and needs
  treatment
  for
  some
  personality
  disorder.
  More than half the patients who
  visit
  their
  family doctor for some physical ailment are
  really suffering from some type of emotional
  disorder.
  Nervous and mental disease
  takes
  a larger toll than do cancer, infantile paraly-
  sis, and
  tuberculosis combined.
  More
  than
  half of
  all the hospital beds
  in
  this country
  are
  occupied
  by
  mental
  patients