Top Pope Benedict Mental Health Quotes

TOP POPE BENEDICT 16TH MENTAL HEALTH QUOTES

1. The situation of mental health in the world

“The problems connected with mental disturbance that now afflicts one-fifth of humanity and is a real social-health care emergency.”

2. To workers and volunteers in the mental health sector

“I commend pastoral workers and voluntary associations and organisations to support in practical ways and through concrete initiatives, those families who have mentally ill people dependent upon them. I hope that the culture of acceptance and sharing will grow and spread to them, thanks also to suitable laws and health-care programmes which provide sufficient resources for their practical application….”

3. To policy makers in the mental health sector

“I therefore encourage the efforts of those who strive to ensure that all mentally ill people are given access to necessary forms of care and treatment. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, services for these sick people are lacking, inadequate or in a state of decay.”

4. Mental health in the developing world

“It should then be noted that prolonged armed conflicts in various regions of the world, the succession of terrible natural catastrophes and the spread of terrorism, in addition to causing a shocking number of deaths, has triggered psychological traumas that are sometimes difficult to cure in many survivors.”

5. Mental health in highly-developed countries

“In the economically highly-developed countries, experts then recognize that at the origin of new forms of mental disease we may also find the negative impact of the crisis of moral values. This increases the feeling of loneliness, undermining and even breaking up traditional forms of social cohesion, starting with the family institution, and marginalizing the sick, particularly the mentally ill who are all too often considered as a burden on the family and community.”

6. Improving the social context to support the mentally ill and their families

“The social context does not always accept the mentally ill with their limitations, and this is another reason difficulties are encountered in securing the human and financial resources that are needed. One perceives the need to better integrate the two approaches: appropriate therapy and new sensitivity towards disturbance, so as to enable workers in the sector to deal more effectively with these sick people and their families, who would be unable on their own to care adequately for their relatives in difficulty. ”

7. To persons experiencing mental disturbance

“Dear brothers and sisters, tried by illness, I would like to invite you to offer your condition of suffering, together with Christ, to the Father, certain that every trial accepted with resignation is meritorious and draws divine goodness upon the whole of humanity.”

Pope Benedict 16th, World Day of The Sick, 2005

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