Good mental health starts with good connections and strong social bonds. This year we are being invited to reach out to others. This may seem natural and easy, but it is a big change from the way in which people have responded to mental illness in the past.
Think of how the welcoming words for the homes of people who suffered from mental illness became horrible words. Bethlehem became Bedlam. Asylum, meaning a place of rescue, was seen as a place for locking people up. And the words used to describe people suffering with mental illnesses also became cruel words.
These names and changes of name reflected contempt for people with mental illness, a contempt that arose out of fear of people who act differently from us. Fear made people hide the mental illness of family members, lock up children who suffered with it, and avoid talking with people who were mentally ill for fear of catching it. Mental illness carried a stigma that shut down conversation and separated people.
BEGINNING OF HEALING
The silence harmed both the person with mental illness and their family and friends. To talk together, to hang in when relationships become difficult, and to listen even when you cannot understand, are the beginning of healing.
For that reason, the change from seeing mental illness as a curse, a punishment or a mystery to seeing it as illness that can be understood and treated with help from psychologists or doctors has been helpful. It takes away fear and opens closed doors. The change, however, is also accompanied by risks. We can be tempted to see all our anxieties, fears, lostness and unhappiness as an illness for which we should take medicine. Pharmaceutical firms can cash in on this temptation. These feelings may be signs of mental illness, but they may also be a part of human life which we do best to accept, to talk about, and to battle through.
That said, although looking after our personal health is necessary for building a healthy world, it is not sufficient. People do not have an equal chance of contracting physical or mental illness.
Geographical areas where in which people face multiple disadvantage are particularly vulnerable to mental illness. The Jesuit Social Services-sponsored Centre for Just Places has drawn on the ground-breaking Dropping Off the Edge research to respond to the multiplication of disadvantage in some local areas. In them, vulnerability to physical and mental illness is accompanied by higher rates of domestic violence and less access to health services, open space, good food, education and counselling. If unaddressed these conditions will make for intergenerational poverty and poor health.
JUST SOCIETY
Pope Francis has written much about the connections between inequality, illness and social conflict. He has also stressed the importance of a more just society. This is one in which people look out for one another, and in which the government ensures that all people can live in decent conditions, where people matter more than profits, and wealth has a social bond.
These conditions will not stop people falling ill, but they will ensure that they will find encouragement to live healthy lives, have access to free medical attention when they fall ill, and support as they receive the care they need.
This is the large picture. In the personal picture, however mental health week as all about persons and their relationship to themselves, to those close to them and to the world. And those relationships need to be characterised by love, openness and mutual trust.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Building empathy and support – questions and activities
These notes teach empathy, mental well-being, and community support using scripture, teamwork, and thoughtful activities.