I Was Sick…

“I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”                                                                                  Matthew 25:36

One of the blessings of being alive on this planet for 74 years is that I get to see a large swath of change and progress around me. We also get to see our own growth, which is also fascinating, but the subject of another blog.

In the news recently where I live (just north of Dayton, Ohio) the governor of Ohio has set aside funding for a new mental health inpatient facility in Dayton. There is desperate need for it. The irony is, a Dayton mental health facility was closed 16 years ago. Now, we see the need for a new hospital. Well, that need had never gone away. In fact, my first job in the field of mental health was as a social worker in the state hospital at that time, Dayton Mental Health Center.

Mental health treatment was changing rapidly in the 1960’s and 1970’s. New medications were coming out which mitigated the effects of serious mental illness. People with significant thought disorders (delusions) and perceptual problems (auditory and visual hallucinations) which were caused by serious mental illness, were being more or less effectively treated with these new drugs.

Many of the patients in the hospital in those days had deteriorated mentally for many years, and many needed long-term care for their own safety and that of others. As treatments became more available and patients were discharged into the community (theoretically with good support), there was felt to be less need of an institution for their care.

We fast forward 50 years and find that inpatient care, often of longer duration, is still needed to fill the complete spectrum of mental health care. People with chronic mental illness now often find themselves homeless, in prison, or suffering isolation and abuse in a society that does not really understand their needs.

More to come on this. It is timely to think about our response, as Christians, to people in need. How can we best serve the poor and hurting people in our society?

Prayer: Lord, give us wisdom to treat your people with care and dignity, Amen