SHOW UP
Inviting the Church to Care
for Those with Mental Illness

Joan K. King

Last week I sat with a young man at the state hospital talking about the possibility of his discharge. Together we explored what supports he might need to be successful at living in the community. I asked him about a job: would that help?

His blue eyes filled with pain and tears. He didn’t think that would work. “You see,” he went on, “It is such hard work to manage the voices that I just don’t have the energy for a job. Keeping the voices under control and taking care of my daily life is really all I can handle. They never go away. When I am alone they are louder, and I just have to work to stay on top of them.” His eyes weren’t the only ones filled with tears that day as I listened to this intelligent, articulate man talk about his journey.

Pain is a common theme as one listens, really listens, to the stories of persons living with a serious and persistent mental illness. It is easy to maintain distance from the pain when one discusses the influence of the brain, genetics, or family on development of mental illness. There is nothing inherently wrong with such discussions; they are the contexts out of which new ideas and research proposals arrive. But they are not the whole story. Sometimes they stand in the way of the truth that comes from just sitting with the stories people can tell.

I think of another young woman I heard speak a few weeks ago. She spoke with passion of the pain of being labeled with a diagnosis. She acknowledged that without that label she couldn’t get the services she needed. Yet with the label, she wasn’t taken seriously; she was treated sometimes as if she had no intelligence. Basic human respect and dignity were often not afforded her.

Why does society have to treat the poor and the ill so badly, she wondered? I wonder that too. Sometimes I think it is because we all hold our sanity less tightly than we would like to admit. Ask any social work or nursing students about their psych rotation (serving in an institution for the mentally ill), and if they are honest, they will tell of wondering how different from the “inmates” they really were.

But if we can transcend the fear, we can find beauty. When we sit with someone, even someone seriously disturbed, and set judgment aside, there is much truth to be found in and among the ramblings and the delusions. We may even find God there.

Sometimes I think we mistreat those who are mentally ill because we are afraid of the truth inherent in their lives and perspectives. When I listen to people who struggle with depression talk about their thinking, or as they explore the many connections between depression and creativity, I wonder how it is that the Madison Avenue (or even the church’s politically correct) definition of truth got to be set up high on a pedestal and other views labeled as pathological. Maybe that “pathological” view is just what some see when looking through that dark glass with different eyes. Maybe in the church we need to listen to such truth, not just patronize it.

Sometimes I think we don’t like to be uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to sit near those who are talking to themselves or pacing endlessly. It is uncomfortable to be confronted with the anger and outbursts that characterize some forms of mental illness. It is uncomfortable to be unsure whether and how to interrupt the endless flow of conversations that characterize the illness of some. It is uncomfortable to watch some struggle with depression for years on end and hold out hope for them, to ask of them continued work toward healing, yet not fall over into blaming.

I believe God calls each of us to confront such discomforts. Not all of us may be called to learn how to walk beside someone with mental illness. But I wonder where the church is in these days as the mental health system changes. As more and more persons with serious mental illness try to live in the community, after decades of societal emphasis on deinstitutionalizing them, where is the church opening doors to and supporting them?

I dream of a small church group sitting with that young man as he copes with the voices always in his head. Of that group inviting him to a meal but not demanding he make conversation. Of that group welcoming him even when he does nothing but sit quietly in the corner.

I dream of people in the church being willing to hear and hold that intelligent articulate young woman as she struggles with her philosophical questions in the context of her mental illness. I long for people willing to go with her to those appointments where she is demeaned and disrespected, people who would bear witness to the systems that mistreat her.

I dream of a church willing to collaborate with the many agencies that provide support to mentally ill persons living in their communities. A church ready to provide potluck meals at their community site for the people living there, a church willing to plan a Christmas party complete with gifts for those living on limited incomes, a church that just “shows up” in people’s lives.

I dream of a church open to those sitting in the pews every Sunday who struggle with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder. A church that can allow such people to talk openly about their struggles without shame and thus help them carry such burdens.

Sometimes I see such a church breaking in. I saw this when my sister-in-law Angela died and both her Catholic friends and the dear members of her Mennonite congregation came together to remember her. People from both contexts saw Angela’s beauty and brilliance and respected her for that. In both settings her mental illness was viewed as representing only one facet of who she was.

In my own congregation I have caught glimpses of hope as we have tried to walk beside someone with mental illness; as an elder and a pastor have reached out; as men have helped move posessions from one living space to another. Were we successful? Does the fact that the person moved away and cut ties mean we failed?

When I ask such questions, I hear my friend Jan, who lives with her own mental illness. As I walked through my pain over Angela’s death, Jan’s was perhaps the most healing voice. Jan tells of the people who reached out across her psychosis to offer her their presence, to hold her hand, to hold the external world for her at a time when she couldn’t hold it for herself.

When I listen to Jan, I wonder if what Jesus really asks of us is to show up even when we are anxious and to be present even when it is uncomfortable. I wonder if he asks us to believe that among the least, the most outcast, he is there waiting for us.

—Joan Kenerson King, Telford, Pennsylvania, manages her own therapy practice in Paoli and Telford. She provides clinical consultation to community programs for persons with mental illness. An avid storyteller, she is mother of three nearly adult daughters and wife of Michael.