My knowledge of mental illness is incomplete, but it is real. For a long time I have met parents searching for a place where their mentally ill child can be cared for. At the same time, young people with their psychological balance disturbed come to the Arche hoping to find refuge in a warm community. Many of the people we welcome as mentally handicapped also show serious disturbances of personality. Some have shown signs of childhood psychosis since early childhood, and traces remain. Others, victims of rejection and trauma, add symptoms of neurosis—sometimes severe—to their mental handicap.
By training, I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist. My reflections can only be those of an educator who continually encounters the suffering of those who suffer and cause others to suffer. I feel deeply involved with these men and women we call "mentally ill"—people who have an immense need for places to live or work, where they are welcomed with respect. Society and all of us must find for them true friends who can help them discover or maintain meaning in their lives, a sense of hope.
A Special Kind of Illness
It is absolutely essential that a person with mental illness not see their condition as shameful—there is no dishonor in consulting a psychiatrist. Yet we must say that this is a special kind of illness, one that concerns how the person perceives reality and how they react to it.
Paranoia, for example, is an illness that drives a person to feel constantly hunted and persecuted, to no longer see reality as it is, to no longer build on objective foundations.
For some, reality is unbearable. A child abandoned by parents in a hospital cannot accept being completely alone, with no one telling them, "You matter!" How can they have a positive image of themselves if they are treated with contempt because of a handicap or illness? When reality seems hellish, the person takes refuge in dreams or fantasy. In truth, we all do this sometimes. When things go badly, we find comfort in daydreams, not the dreams of sleep but the dreams of waking life. A mentally ill person is someone who has become trapped in their dream. In some cases, the personality is completely shattered, no longer able to grasp reality. In others, the person is aware of their difficulties but cannot adapt to daily social life. These impasses almost always require a psychiatrist's intervention.
«The mentally fragile person seeks a "fusional" relationship, yet at the same time fears it»
One should not confuse, as Dr. Lamarche said, "existential crises" with pathological crises, which are permanent blocks. Dr. Terruwe, a Dutch psychiatrist, believed that while in Freud's time many neuroses resulted from repressive education, today they stem mainly from lack of affirmation or deep insecurity.
In her psychiatric practice, she encountered many people with "schizoid" symptoms—a term expressing varying degrees of affinity with schizophrenia, used to describe temperament and personality—who were really just fragile people in total confusion, profoundly decentralized and depersonalized, who had lost all sense of their own identity, without hope or motivation.
When we have been traumatized, shattered by contradictions with no way out, we risk losing all taste for life.
We know this well: when we are motivated, we want to work, to start new things. Vital energy stimulates motivation and vice versa. When, by contrast, we have been shattered or traumatized by contradictions without resolution, we risk losing all taste for life. We then need someone to share our suffering and confusion, someone who understands us and reassures us. Gradually, we begin to trust life and ourselves again. If we do not find such a companion, there is serious risk of being locked in illness. Freud thought many disturbances came from oppression by the "father." In our time, we are more likely victims of parental abdication, especially that of fathers. For Dr. Terruwe, many people showing "schizoid" symptoms need above all someone to reassure them, to help them discover their own personality and gifts.
A grave mistake is to subject someone in an "existential crisis"—feeling alone, useless, incapable—to psychiatric treatment. If someone already feeling useless also gets the impression they are mentally ill, they risk losing even more confidence in themselves, and their condition will worsen. What they need is a companion, even a psychiatrist, who tells them: "You are not sick; you are simply anxious and have lost confidence in yourself. We will walk a bit together, and I can promise you that you will return to work, that you will return to life."
Finding the Right Distance
It is hard for a companion to find the right distance in a relationship with someone who is mentally fragile or ill. Such a person often never had a privileged relationship with parents, and so seeks a "fusional" relationship while at the same time fearing it, having had bad experiences. Indeed, when the relationship becomes too close, the fragile person becomes too dependent and demanding; since the person they love grows afraid or withdraws, they discover that this relationship is dangerous—that it eventually provokes rejection. The companion must therefore maintain a proper distance in the relationship to avoid creating false hope or disappointment. This is why professionals charge a fee and set a specific consultation time, so the ill person does not establish too tight a relationship of dependence from the start and knows the limits of the situation. They will not transfer their desire for a mother or father onto the psychiatrist or psychologist.
The companion must maintain a proper distance in the relationship
The non-professional companion must also set limits in the relationship, commit according to their responsibilities, and explain what they can and cannot give. With time, through mutual trust and some satisfaction, the first shoots may grow.
Parents' Guilt
One troubling aspect of mental illness is how some professionals burden parents with guilt. These parents then become completely disoriented: they suddenly lose all spontaneity with their child; they analyze and accuse themselves constantly; they quickly swing from sentimental tenderness to irritation and fear. Parents should understand this: if their children are mentally ill, it is because there was fertile ground for the illness. Their clumsy attitudes, contradictions in the relationship, or sometimes unconscious rejection may have triggered or worsened the situation, but they are not the root cause.
«Parents need support, help in finding the right approach, not judgment or condemnation»
It is true that sometimes a mentally ill person cannot separate from parents because of too strong a dependence. It is as if they are trapped, imprisoned. They expect too much from parents who cannot meet their demands. Insoluble conflicts arise. If the child leaves the parents, they feel even more rejected. It is a vicious circle.
I have encountered many painful situations with knots so tangled that no clear solution was possible. But in all these cases, parents needed above all to be supported, to be helped in finding the right approach, not to be judged or condemned.
A person who is "mentally ill" or in an "existential crisis" is above all a person who suffers. They are broken within themselves and need great respect and compassion. Yet with their strange behaviors and insatiable demands, they provoke fear and unease in those around them. They, who have such great need of welcome and understanding, often receive the opposite.
The mentally ill person is often drawn, particularly to Christian communities—especially warm ones, like charismatic communities. Often they seek help and support in what is religious. Yet many psychiatrists fear religion, because it seems mythic to them, prone to feeding illusions. For their part, many priests fear the mentally ill person, their fertile imagination that can easily lead to "false mysticism." There are also Christians too "simplistic" who believe that warm welcome and prayer can heal everything. They do not want to admit that illness exists and requires expertise.
The attraction many mentally ill people feel toward religion is real. Evidence of this is, for example, the excessive use of medals and statues, which sometimes becomes obsessive superstition. But the excess may be only in form and mode of expression. We should not reject outright these manifestations, which can in fact be a starting point for dialogue. Often they express an authentic desire.
True religion is profoundly realistic and can be deeply therapeutic. Beginning from God's Word, from prayer, we can help the mentally ill person meet their neighbor and perform acts of service and kindness toward them. When they discover in faith that they are loved by God, they can begin to recover some confidence in themselves. When they meet a priest full of compassion and skill who gives them the sacrament of reconciliation, they can find relief from scrupulous obsessions and guilt through Jesus's forgiveness, even if they remain ill.
«Beginning from God's Word, from prayer, we can help the person»
But the priest must not be alone. The ill person risks asking too much of them—too much presence, too much personal investment—while what they really need is a community around them that creates limits in the relationship, limits that will be well received.
Through the Passion of Jesus Christ, the mentally ill person can discover meaning in their own suffering and perhaps, in a flash of consciousness, understand how to say "yes" to God. And God, in his love, beyond hallucinations and obsessions, can meet the mentally ill person in the depths of their conscience.
In this there is a mystery of grace.
— Jean Vanier, 1988
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