It's still a sort of us and them resource, as if people with mental illness can't think straight or think for themselves or don't have their own spirituality and struggles with making sense of their illness in relation to their faith.
I think a part of the problem is that there are stereotypes about people with mental illness, and of course if you aren't experiencing it yourself it can be hard to delve past those. I think one of those stereotypes is that people with mental illness can't think straight, that they are kind of in another world in their heads.
This is true for some people with mental illness, but I have found that people with mental illness often have even DEEPER spiritual lives than many people who do not deal with it. Many actually have a DEEPER self-awareness than the average person. Many people with mental illness do understand that they are having irrational thoughts. These thoughts and emotional experiences affect their bodily response in ways that may be out of their control or (at the very least) hard to control.
Anxiety can be experienced as a pounding heart, a tightness in the throat, a numbness in the mouth, a heaviness in the limbs, or in various other ways.
Depression can be experienced as this emptiness where the mouth feels downturned and the eye-sockets somehow can't let out the tears of heaviness, because it's too heavy to let out.
~~ Mental illness is experienced in SO MANY other ways even within each illness. ~~
From my own personal experience, in many cases my mental illness does not mean that I cannot think rationally but rather that my body does not respond rationally to a situation. Some people with mental illnesses recognize there is a problem and others don't. Recognition doesn't get rid of the problem, but it does lead to one looking for resources to help.
Questions that have arisen in my mind include:
How can I have a deep interior life and distinguish the voice of God from deceptive voices that are trying to get me down?
How do I meditate and not get stuck in negative rumination?
When God asks us to suffer on earth, does He mean this kind of suffering (from irrational thoughts)?
I have considered starting my own support group with other Catholic women. I still would love to do this someday. That said, I would appreciate having more guidance from the Church in this regard.
Sitting in a circle with a bunch of Catholic women discussing our struggles can have MANY positive outcomes, yet I would like to be able to take even a step further and have in hand a book written by a priest, religious, or another strong Catholic delving into specific spiritual struggles that are common to people with mental illness. Some kind of format.
I would also like to hear more from Catholic Social Teaching (though I understand the difficulty in this considering that mental illness is experiences in a plethora of different ways and there is likely no one simple answer as to how people with mental illness should address their struggles).
Obviously, there's no one simple answer for the resources needed by people with mental illness. Everyone experiences mental illness in a different way. But if parishes would be willing to begin support groups to connect with people going through similar things, if we could try to come to an understanding of mental illness and what God means by it through a Catholic lense, this would be immensely helpful to so many men and women struggling to find resources that make sense of how their mental illness may play into their relationship with God, answer questions in regard to what battles have more-so spiritual or psychological bases (or a mix), and so much more.
The interior life is deep in and of itself, and it can be especially hard for a person dealing with mental illness to navigate.
For further reading on the subject:
(though I may not agree 100% with everything stated in this articles, there are some good points)
Through a glass darkly: How Catholics struggle with mental illness
--Idea: Parish with staff in charge of Mental Health Ministry
Lessons learned about Catholics with mental health struggles
--Idea: Theology of the Mind
Mental health and sinfulness - the Church urgently needs clear teaching
