From the Editor
Children start having lockdown drills in infancy: My 3-year-old has four this year alone at his Montessori preschool, as mandated by New York State. Last summer the U.S. Surgeon General found that 48 percent of parents find that most days their stress is completely overwhelming, citing the lack of reliable and affordable child care, lack of parental leave, social media, and gun violence as just a few of the reasons for what he calls a “serious public health concern for our country” in a New York Times op-ed.1 Basic necessities are becoming ever more expensive due to inflation, with food prices raising over 25 percent since 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.2 And in 2024, the American Psychological Association found that politics were also a major source of stress for people, with 77 percent of U.S. adults saying that they were significantly stressed over the future of our nation.3
All in all, it is no wonder that more than 1 in 5 adults over the age of 18 are experiencing some sort of mental illness, with almost 20 percent being diagnosed with some sort of anxiety disorder.4 And yet, the same report, from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, found that in 2021 less than half of adults with mental illness received treatment.
Failing to receive mental health care isn’t trivial. People with depression have a 40 percent higher risk of developing cardiovascular or metabolic diseases than the general population. They are more likely to abuse substances or suffer from unemployment. High school students are more likely to drop out of school or repeat a grade.
Our faith lives and mental health care go hand in hand. In a pastoral letter titled “Hope and Healing,” the California bishops write, “Catholics should be the first among all to witness to the truth of the dignity of every human person, so as to live in love and solidarity with our neighbor.”5
1 Vivek H. Murthy, “Surgeon General: Parents Are at Their Wits’ End. We Can Do Better,” New York Times (New York, NY), Aug. 28, 2024.
2 “Food Price Outlook - Summary Findings,” USDA Economic Research Service, USDA, updated Jan. 8, 2025, https://www. ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summaryfindings#:~:text=Between%20the%201970s%20and%20 early,prices%20increased%20by%207.7%20percent.
3 Zara Abrams, “The Impact of Election Stress: Is Political Anxiety Harming your Health?” American Psychological Association, updated Oct. 22, 2024, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/10/managingpolitical-stress.
4 “Mental Health by the Numbers,” National Association on Mental Illness, updated April 2023, https://www.nami.org/about-mentalillness/mental-health-by-the-numbers/#:~:text=22.8%25%20 of%20U.S.%20adults%20experienced,represents%201%20in%20 20%20adults.
5 California Catholic Conference (Bishops of California), “Hope and Healing: A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of California on Caring for Those Who Suffer from Mental Illness Addressed to All Catholics and People of Goodwill,” May 2018, cacatholic.org.
This issue of AMOS examines how people of faith are working toward mental health care both in their communities and as individuals. Christian Bentley, a mental health first aid provider and peer support specialist, writes about how societal stresses place an additional burden on mental health and how his faith helps him prioritize his own care in the face of such an oppressive system. He cites prayer, the rosary, the saints, and scripture as all having meaning for people seeking to integrate their spirituality with their mental health.
Along a similar vein, in “Prayer and Mental Health,” Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J. writes about how prayer and mental health care aren’t mutually exclusive, but actually go hand in hand. “While prayer, worship, and meditation may be essential aspects to mental health, they are not the only avenues for engaging with it,” he writes. “Christians have a spiritual and theological obligation to use all available resources to be healthy, including having a good therapist, a strong spiritual community, spiritual director, and/or pastoral counselor.” In “Honor Your Journey,” Samantha Camera takes this one step further, explaining step by step how to find a therapist who fits each person’s individual needs.
“Prayer and mental health care aren’t mutually exclusive, but actually go hand in hand.”
Other articles, including “Communities of Care” and “Caring for the Whole Person in Catholic Schools,” outline the work that IPJC is doing to prioritize this issue. In the former, Jessica Molina, a member of the Aberdeen Women’s Justice Circle, writes of how the “group felt compelled to step into the [mental] health crisis as champion messengers to help distribute healthbased information and resources” and details the work they’ve done over the past few years. The latter article is an abridged version of a report that the Youth Action Team put together about how to prioritize mental health in Catholic schools, which they then presented to the archdiocese.
Whether this issue inspires someone to get involved in advocacy in their local communities or to finally seek out a therapist for themselves, I hope that each of these articles inspire a new perspective on how mental health and faith interact.
—Emily Sanna, Editor