The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is renewing and refreshing its National Catholic Mental Health Campaign.
The bishops say the campaign is meant "to encourage all people of goodwill to respond to the ongoing mental health crisis." CHA is part of a national coalition that helped the USCCB develop and create the bishops' initiative, which launched in 2023.
Paul Jarzembowski has a lead role in the campaign in his position as associate director for the laity in the USCCB's Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. He says in its first two years the campaign has succeeded in raising awareness of mental illness among Catholics.
For example, he says more dioceses have put information about mental illness and links to resources for care on their websites and many parish priests have addressed the topic, including planning Mental Health Sunday services in mid-October using USCCB-created resources. A key resource is the Novena for Mental Health. The novena's prayers stretch over nine days. Each one has a focus, such as poverty and mental health, removing stigmas, and suicide awareness.
Jarzembowski credits the campaign for encouraging open discussions about an often-sensitive topic. "Anyone who finds out about it is very enthused about the fact that the bishops are really engaged in this issue," he says. "So that inspires the conference to keep building and growing."
Reinvigoration
In what Jarzembowski calls a reinvigoration of the campaign, the bishops added a component this year called Healing and Hope. The USCCB describes the component as "focused on amplifying local engagement on mental health and the accompaniment of people struggling with mental illness." The initiative includes a revitalized social media campaign with new reflections by bishops that invite conversations on the realities and stigmas of mental illness and plans for state conferences focused on mental health.
"Part of the reinvigoration is looking at ways in which this campaign can go from being an idea that the bishops have in their national capacity to actually affecting and engaging people in their local parishes and dioceses," Jarzembowski says.
In spotlighting mental health, he says the bishops are being intentional in framing it as both a spiritual issue that should be met with understanding, compassion and prayer as well as a clinical one that can require medical interventions.
A call to action for Catholic health care in the campaign, he says, is "to recognize that we all need to work together more and to be more collaborative in how we address mental health from a Catholic perspective, that it's not just spiritual or clinical. Instead, it is about all of us working together."
Advocacy
Clay O'Dell, CHA director of advocacy, serves on the council that advises the bishops' conference on health and social issues and that helped initiate the campaign. O'Dell says CHA's advocacy work includes encouraging policymakers to continue to cover and expand access to mental health care.
"CHA's policy perspective is an important one, making sure that the government and Congress are doing what they can to support mental health initiatives in the country," O'Dell says. "But that is really based on having awareness among people of the importance of mental health and where to go to get mental health services."
Like Jarzembowski, O'Dell says the efforts of both health care providers — and groups like CHA that advocate for them — and spiritual care providers are vital to ensuring that mental health care is seen as essential and that funding is available to support it.
"I think that all of the coalition members would agree that within Catholic teaching is the importance of good health, and that includes physical health and mental health," he says. "For CHA, that's our number one issue and priority is making sure that people get the quality and affordable health care, physical and mental, that they need."
Workforce issue
Jill Fisk, director of mission services for CHA, says the organization recognizes mental health care as a basic and essential human need and part of holistic care. She says providing this care aligns with Catholic tradition, teachings and scripture that calls for meeting the needs of the whole person.
She notes that mental health care also is critical for health care workers themselves. She points to work to address this need from CHA's well-being advisory council and other organizations such as the Harvard Human Flourishing Program and the Coalition for Physician and APP Well-being.
"It's encouraging to see the church's commitment to this, because it's one of the most pressing needs upon our workforce," Fisk says. "To not only see the sort of the good work that's happening within our systems, and the strategic emphasis upon a healthy workforce, (but also) to see the church equally be committed really is helping to support human dignity."