Our society wants people to fit in; to go to school like
everyone else, to get a job, to relate to others harmoniously; to be the same.
Our societies have difficulty with people who are perceived as different. At
one time it was religious orders who sought to break through the barriers of
difference and offer care and tenderness to those rejected as strangers and
outcasts. For many years, perhaps even centuries, those who needed different
forms of specialised help (those with mental illness, those considered to be
mentally disabled, the sick, the poor etc.), found consolation by being cared
for by special religious people; religious people who were special in
their motivations, tenderness, compassion, if not always in their competence!
Today things are different. There are fewer religious people, but there are
more ‘specialists’: psychiatrists, mental health nurses, social workers,
special, therapists and so on. There has been progress in accepting people who
are different. Now there are many different types of schools, workshops,
residences and services, all designed to facilitate rehabilitation and help
people find community and peacefulness. This is all for the good.
It is interesting to note the way in which the term
‘special’, with regard to mental health care, seems to have moved from the
religious to the secular. The temptation is to think that religion nowadays has
nothing much to offer in the face of so many specialists! Religion sometimes
seems a little strange in the face of the technological specialties we find in mental
health services. But of course religious communities have much to offer if they
can find the confidence to offer it. My hope is that religious communities can
regain their confidence and reclaim their special ministry especially towards
one particular group of marginalised people.
As we marvel at the rise of the specialists in mental
health care, we can easily forget the small things. People suffering from
severe mental illnesses can become completely lost in the midst of the
bureaucracy that accompanies the administration of complex treatments and changes
occurring in the system. The complicated paperwork that people have to complete
in order to receive their benefits is often far too convoluted. There are far
too few residences and places of respite. The temptation simply to hand out medication
and do little more is ever present in the midst of a busy and overburdened
health care service. Many of those who are sick live with a lot of suffering
and difficulties in their family or on their own. Some fall into street life;
they disturb society. People feel lost when they are in contact with them, not
because people with mental illness are not lovable, but because people have learned
the wrong stories to tell about them. Some gravitate towards churches or church
organisations, sensing that there they may find some compassion and help. Sometimes
they do, but often they don’t.
What does the church have to do to reclaim its ‘specialness’?
The answer is both complicated and simple at the same time: the churches’
call is to meet those with mental illness, to learn to love them
with the love and the passion of Jesus and to offer them a place of
belonging. It is in these small and apparently foolish things that Jesus
will be revealed (1 Cor. 1:27). I hope church people can continue to become
more confident about their ‘specialness’ and to be enabled to look differently
at the experience of mental illness, and in looking differently see properly.
When we see properly we act faithfully.
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