The U.S. bishops launched a mental health initiative last year and one of its leaders said the response has been “tremendous.”
Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Commission on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, updated his fellow bishops on the National Catholic Mental Health Campaign at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2024 Spring General Meeting on June 13.
The gathering, part of the annual fall and spring General Synod, which the bishops convene to conduct business and discuss various canon law and civil issues, will be held June 12-14 in Louisville, Kentucky, with public sessions streamed live on the USCCB website June 13 and 14.
The USCCB’s mental health campaign was launched in October 2023 under the leadership of Barron and Archbishop Boris A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, who serves as chair of the USCCB’s National Justice and Human Development Committee.
To develop the campaign, Gadziak and Barron partnered with several organizations, including Catholic Charities USA, Catholic Health Association, National Catholic Partnership for People with Disability, U.S. Society of St. Vincent de Paul, National Catholic Youth Ministry League, National Catholic Youth Ministry Network, National Young Adult Ministry Institute and Catholic Mental Health Chaplaincy Association.
In a message introducing the initiative, the two prelates said its goals were threefold: to raise awareness of the issue, to eliminate the stigma against people who suffer from mental illness and “to send a clear message to everyone that everyone who needs help should get it.”
“Awareness is growing, and the dangers and burdens of mental health issues are more apparent than ever,” Guziak (who was unable to attend the USCCB spring meeting due to a funeral overseas) recently told OSV News.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, roughly 60 million U.S. adults, or one in five, will experience a mental illness in 2021, with more than 14 million of those reporting severe symptoms and more than 19 million struggling with both substance abuse and mental illness simultaneously.
The nation’s young people have been hit particularly hard: In 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued recommendations on the issue, citing data showing that one in three high school students and half of girls felt persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2019, a 40% increase since 2009.
“There’s still a lot of stigma and fear around treating mental health in a holistic and specialized way,” Guziak said in an interview with OSV News in late May.
In his report to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ spring meeting, Barron said that over the past few months, campaign organizers “have been holding roundtable discussions on two populations experiencing mental health issues: young people and our own clergy.”
These conversations provided a “foundation for many more roundtables in the future,” he said.
A recording of one such roundtable held March 19 is available on the USCCB’s website, and Baron said future sessions will also be made available online.
At the same time, he said, “the discussion, while useful, only scratches the surface of the crisis.”
Baron said the campaign “has really generated a lot of enthusiasm among our followers” and that “we really believe we’re doing something good here.”
He asked the bishops in attendance to focus their breakout discussions about the campaign on three points: their dioceses’ existing programs and activities that address mental health concerns, strategies the church can adopt to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues, and ways “the prophetic voice of the church can advocate for individuals and families affected by mental health issues.”
Barron was joined on the report by Kelly Alice Robinson, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, and Brian Corbin, executive vice president of member services for CCUSA.
Robinson said most of the 15 million people CCUSA has assisted in the past year have “experienced some kind of trauma,” making them “more likely to experience a mental health crisis or develop post-traumatic stress disorder.”
She cited several statistics from the 2022 KFF/CNN Mental Health in America survey, which found that 28% of families nationwide report having a family member who required in-person treatment for mental health distress, 21% have had a family member undergo emergency medical treatment for a drug overdose, 16% have lost a family member to suicide, and 16% have experienced homelessness due to mental illness.
Robinson said being a “trauma-sensitive church” involves recognizing and being sensitive to the impact of trauma on families, helping parishioners “recognize their experiences of and responses to trauma,” and providing “resources for spiritual and professional recovery” in a variety of ways.
Corbin described some of those resources, including CCUSA’s Whole Hearted, a parish-based trauma-awareness support that integrates spirituality and religious practice with behavioral health, and CCUSA’s Hope, a pilot program developing a mental health chatbot.
The session also highlighted the experience of Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska. In his May 2024 pastoral letter, “A Hopeful Future,” Bishop Conley shared his own struggle with depression and anxiety and how an integrative Catholic approach to mental health enabled him to return to priesthood after a leave of absence.
“Our dream is that every Catholic across the country will pray, discuss, learn and advocate for spiritual, mental and physical health in our parishes,” Barron said.
