Mentally challenged people

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Polak

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I don’t want it to seem as though I am having doubts, but this is one of those questions that, if a non-believer pushes me on it, I don’t know what to say.

I know there are different levels of mental and physical disabilities and some people who have them but still lead happy lives, but I’m speaking here of the most severe cases.

There are mentally disabled people who live near me and require carers 24/7. They understand very little about the world. They can’t take care of the most basic tasks, let alone even beginning to understand the idea of God and Christianity. Why did God put them here? Why did God create human beings who don’t even have the mental capacity to recognise who he is? Why did God create some people whose mental disabilities are actually dangerous to those around them? Harming another person is a sin. A mentally ill person who becomes violent doesn’t understand it is wrong. Again, that person doesn’t have much freedom to choose. Some people’s mental illnesses cause them to be a danger to others, and they have to be put in places where they won’t be around other people.

I’ve always found it hard to understand why such people are put in this world by God. I don’t have contempt for them and I do believe they should be cared for, but if it’s a case of God putting them here to see how others look after them, then it’s almost like he is using the lives of the mentally ill to test others, but the mentally ill don’t get to have any type of life at all. It’s almost like their lives are being sacrificed to see how others deal with them.
 
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Might you be able to alter your title to reflect the much more sensitive wording in the rest of your post? The ‘R’ word is no longer really appropriate. Thank you. 🙂
 
Polak said:
the mentally ill don’t get to have any type of life at all. It’s almost like their lives are being sacrificed to see how others deal with them.
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Are you sure? How can we judge from the outside at the relationships mentally disabled people form with the people who take care of them? How do you know it’s only a one way exchange?

I’ve never lived with someone who had a severe mental disability, but I had an uncle with Down syndrome. He was one of my favourite persons in this world. He passed away four years ago and I miss him daily.

There was much he couldn’t understand or do. He visibly had a relationship of some kind with God - which in turn was a mystery for me.

One of the things he taught me was that intellectual understanding of the world and its happenings is just one possible way of relating to them. This intellectual way was mostly blocked to him, but in terms of what some people call “emotional intelligence” - empathizing, seizing fleeting feelings, sensing at once sadness, discomfort or unease in someone, and trying to ease them - he was far, far more competent than the rest of us. He truly had the gift of loving others, and saw the world mainly through that prism.
 
Jesus said whatsoever you do for the least of these you do unto ME.
So instead of seeing them as a burden we should look at them as a challenge for us to raise to the occasion and show them the love that Jesus has for them.
In some countries there are deciding whether to murder them so that the “social weight for their caring” is diminished.
Please explain what is the difference between that and what Hitler did.

Peace!
 
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Why are there able-bodied and average intelligence people on this earth who maim and kill others?

It’s not fair to single out the intellectually disabled.
 
One of my daughters volunteered, as a teen, to help with handicapped children.

Eventually she got a bachelors in nursing.

Now she is near retirement.

I was so happy she made that choice!
 
Polak said:
don’t get to have any type of life at all.
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Actually: let me break this down a bit.

Mental illness is not the same as mental retardation.
You can be one but not the other or both.
But as to having “no life”?

I’m not so sure of that.

Both my menatally ill and mentally retarded patients have good days and bad days, likes and dislikes, they smile and laugh and cry.

So to claim it’s non stop misery for Them or their caregivers isn’t really accurate.
 
That’s so wonderful. I know I couldn’t do it, I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth. I so very much admire those of you who can and do.
 
Address of Cardinal Barragan in Adelaide, Australia 2006
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, President of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, delivered this address on mental illness at a conference held in Australia as part of the celebration for the World Day of the Sick on February 11, 2006.

Catholic Culture website : …
Excerpts only: Therefore, once the mental illness has caused such a disorder as to take away from the mentally ill patient any responsibility for his actions, qualifying them as separation from the divine will —as a sin— the mental patient cannot separate from God. In other words, the image of God in him cannot be distorted. In this case his knowledge or his volitive option are no longer sufficient to motivate any human action that separates him from God. His bodily and psychic conditions do not allow him to commit a grave sin, given that in his state of disequilibrium he does not have that full knowledge and ability of assent required to sin.

If we approach the argument from this point of view, whereby the mentally ill patient does not have the knowledge or the faculty of full consent required to commit a mortal sin, his is not a deformed image of God, since that image can only be deformed by sin. Certainly, it is the suffering image of God, but not a deformed image. He is a reflection of the mystery of the victorious Cross of the Lord. Inspired by the image of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 53, 1-7) we are drawn to a conscious act of faith in the suffering Christ.
This is not comprehensible to a secularized mentality; it is only understood within the context of Christian optimism.
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The above, I think, could not only apply to sufferers of mental illness. It could also apply to sufferers of a condition that has robbed them of personal ability to make free choices of their will. Such freedom is a required condition in order to commit mortal sin.

I worked voluntary for a while in the office of a charity supporting sufferers of down syndrome. They are beautiful people!
 
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We don’t know what they know in the depths of their hearts, if they cannot tell us. We can only assume.
 
Well said!

“The Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (First Book of Samuel - Chapter 16)
 
Polak said:
but the mentally ill don’t get to have any type of life at all. It’s almost like their lives are being sacrificed to see how others deal with them.
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Thank you for speaking up and expressing your thoughts very honestly. You are not alone in your thinking and it does present others with an opportunity to ‘set the record straight’. Thank you.

I suffer a quite serious case of bipolar disorder and the second most serious mental illness (schizophrenia is the first). I will suffer bipolar for the rest of my life. I am now almost 75 and bipolar onset when I was 28. I have lived a rewarding life and one with contribution to society. I know a psychologist who suffers schizophrenia and travels lecturing as well as working in private practise.

If a person suffering MI is ‘written off’, it might be that person could, given the opportunity, live a full and contributing life. When I first fell ill with bipolar at 28, my then husband was told by psychiatry that I would “probably be a cot case for the rest of her life”. My then husband divorced me, my extended family abandoned me and my children were taken from me. Even my parish abandoned me. That was all back over 45 years ago. Very thankfully, Deo Gratius, there have been huge advances in medicine, including medical practitioners, re mental illness and other illnesses affecting brain function over those more than 45 years. Theology and Church understanding with it has advanced too, at least in words in many instances. It is to walk the talk we need as sufferers. Laudate Dominum.

A psychiatrist once said to me “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty together again”.

I replied “Do not discount The King”.
 
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Polak said:
Why did God put them here? Why did God create human beings who don’t even have the mental capacity to recognise who he is?
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He didn’t, as such. The world is imperfect, due to a number of factors. (One of these is the consequences of sin.) The fact that there is sin and evil and sadness in the world doesn’t imply that “God put them here.”

You’re ascribing something to God which doesn’t belong to His actions.
 
OddBird said:
One of the things he taught me was that intellectual understanding of the world and its happenings is just one possible way of relating to them. This intellectual way was mostly blocked to him, but in terms of what some people call “emotional intelligence” - empathizing, seizing fleeting feelings, sensing at once sadness, discomfort or unease in someone, and trying to ease them - he was far, far more competent than the rest of us.
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That’s the premise of Harvey:


@Polak, if you decide to watch the movie, I suggest that you keep a box or two of Kleenex handy. You’ll cry, laugh and cry some more. This is one of Jimmy Stewart’s best roles.

On a more serious note, I have epilepsy. I’ve been on medications for 50+ years.

When I was little, kids would avoid me because they thought that epilepsy was contagious! My late father remonstrated with the principal and teachers at my elementary school. It was their duty to correct this falsehood but they didn’t do anything about it.

Sadly this false notion that epilepsy is contagious survived into the 21st century. One of my customers told me the same thing a year or two ago and I was astonished. How could this intelligent person be so ignorant? 😫 Honestly, I really had to restrain myself in order not to lose my temper.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I realized that my epilepsy was one of the greatest blessings God could have given me. It helped me to grow closer to God and made me more sensitive to the sufferings of others. My sister was “normal” and my brother was classified as “gifted”. I’m the oldest and I was the “sickly one”.

I was on so much medication when I was little that they impaired my memory as much as my epilepsy. That’s why I’m a consummate saver - if I don’t save things I don’t remember events that happened in my life. Others would call me a hoarder but I don’t see it that way. At some point when I don’t need to remember something then I shred them (e.g. CC statements), donate them (e.g. clothes) or get rid of them.

I have the little prayer book, napkin & matches from my godfather’s wedding in 1967, a little BOLO bottle from my parents’ honeymoon, birthday, Christmas, Easter & get-well cards from my great-aunt and uncle, both grandmothers, and probably the most from my godfather and cousin

Yes, I could get rid of them and I’ve gotten lectured so much I know the spiel by rote (they’re taking up space in your condo; you don’t need all that st; you’re over 50 now, grow up etc.)

At some point maybe I will but I can’t right now…

I have a webinar at 8 p.m. but “I shall return” (apologies to +Gen. D. MacArthur).
 
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