ACMHM News

The COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on participation in religious services just as it did on workplaces, but a new survey indicates strong emotional resilience from those who consider their faith vital to their existence.

Behind the statistics, facts, and figures on our nation’s mental health crisis are human beings—all children of God. How the Church and we, as people of faith, respond can save lives and help get people who are suffering the help they need.

Priests and deacons of the diocese were invited April 23 to participate in a continuing education course on mental health and suicide awareness.

With concerns that suicide rates are rising in communities of color during the pandemic, Catholic mental health workers say the Church can play a key role in response.

While in the confessional with a struggling novice in a lay consecrated community, the late Puerto Rican-born physicist, priest and writer Lorenzo Albacete recommended reading St. Teresa of Ávila's autobiography as penance.

Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Rockford has received a grant to develop mental health ministries in Catholic parishes — a ministry that will be a part of the Catholic Charities’ Counseling program.

I am always relieved when the end of Lent arrives. Not because I found the giving things up part difficult. For the depressed person, giving things up is relatively easy. Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, the author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, once defined depression as a disorder “whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.”

Following a nearly year-long sabbatical to attend to his mental health, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln explained his experience with depression, seeking help, and his return to his duties as a bishop.

Pope Francis has said that seeing a psychiatrist in Argentina helped him with anxiety when he was a younger priest in an interview published in an Argentine newspaper Saturday.

For this new edition of The Deacon’s Mic, I’m honored to talk with Deacon Ed Shoener, from the Diocese of Scranton. Ed created a new and vital ministry five years ago, when he wrote candidly — and movingly — about the suicide of his 29-year-old daughter.