I am an anxious person. If there is something to worry about, you can bet I have worried about it. If there is something too silly and too nonsensical to worry about, you can bet I have worried about that too. Anxiety is a part of me. It’s in my DNA. It’s in my personal history. It is as real to me as my right arm or the freckles on my face.
When I was in my mid-20s, life had become unbearable to me. When my husband was at work, I would find myself lying in a dark living room with the television on. I would try not to move. I would keep the sun out. I would do everything possible to keep my brain from thinking and to avoid stimulation because to think meant that I could trigger a bout of anxiety so bad it would leave me unable to function.
So finally I made the decision to take a new step. I knew that there was more to life than hiding from fear and anxiety. I knew God had created a whole big world out there, and I was barely experiencing any of it hiding away in my living room. Therefore, with guidance from a medical professional, I decided that I was going to start taking Lexapro.
I told a friend at the time. Her response was, “Huh. I’ve heard people say that Catholics don’t need anxiety medications as much as other people because we have God to trust in.” I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that things are said out of the best of intentions, but it was nearly impossible not to hear in her comments doubt about the authenticity of my faith and my ability to trust in God.
But my desire for a helpful medication is not due to a lack of belief in the power of God. I am a person who believes in miracles, including miraculous healing. A Rwandan Catholic priest, Father Ubald, came to my parish a few years ago, and I believe his prayers brought healing to the chronic pain my husband was experiencing. I pray to God every day for myself and for those I love. I pray when I am anxious. I pray for peace. I pray for an easing of suffering and depression. I believe that there is no greater gift that God has given to us than prayer.
In addition to all of that, however, I also take seriously the advice of the Rev. Jacques Philippe, author of Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart, who writes that we have a responsibility to keep our minds at peace because it is only when our minds are at peace that we can most faithfully follow God with a free and open heart.
Most, but not all, of my mental health struggles were at their worst before I had children. But for someone like me, who has struggled a lifetime with these issues, it is naïve to think that I would never experience an uptick again. Over the years, I have. Now I know that if I am suffering mentally, I have to take concrete steps to get back on track. I have to do this not only for myself but also for my husband, my children and my God, who asks much of me. I have to go back to therapy; I have to make sure I’m eating right. I have to make my bed and create a structure. And I have to continue taking my medications that help me feel stable. If I fail to do these things, I am not able to function at my best, either as a mother, a wife, a writer or as a child of God. A healthy diet and adequate sleep and exercise are ideal for anyone, but when someone is in the throes of anxiety or depression, one of the very symptoms of the disease is an inability to do those very things that help the most. Sometimes medication is needed to allow a person to take care of themselves properly. There is no shame in that.
As a culture, we have gotten better at acknowledging that mental health issues are real. We have done a fairly decent job of destigmatizing therapy. People are not so afraid to share these struggles. What I still see, however, particularly in Catholic circles, is the idea that medication denotes a lack of trust in God and priorities that are out of line with those of a Christian life. To follow this line of thinking is to deny the suffering of countless saints who likely struggled with mental health issues before efficacious therapies and medications were available. If even the saints struggled with issues like scrupulosity, anxiety, depression and eating disorders, then we need not feel alone in our struggles. And we should feel empowered to address them with resources that were unavailable to previous generations.
To live a life is to suffer, but to suffer well is to learn to accept help when and where it is offered. It is to allow oneself the humility to admit when help is needed. It is to realize that we are all broken, and if our brokenness manifests itself in psychological ways, that it is most prudent to treat it with whichever means is most appropriate for our situation.
The Catholic community needs to embrace the idea that medications, while not a cure-all and not necessarily always a prudent first line of defense, are a valid treatment for what are legitimate medical ailments. Our lives on this side of the veil will always include suffering. We cannot escape that. Antidepressants and similar medications do not make people artificially happy. They do not take away suffering. They do not mask grief or help people hide from their problems. What they do is give a suffering person a more stable baseline, so that they can make choices for their lives from a place of wholeness and health. They can give people the ability to bring healing to their brain so that they can become more truly themselves.
People can judge those decisions. People will judge those decisions. As a Catholic community, however, we need to learn that while suffering is a necessary part of life, it is not one we should prolong simply out of a desire to avoid pharmaceuticals. We are a people called to follow prudence, and prudence requires us to keep our bodies and our minds in their most optimal shape. We are also called to be people of mercy, and this mercy should extend to all of those who are suffering in invisible ways.
