The mental health big pharma industrial complex in the United States of America is, and has always been, an abomination. You could be a nice normal person just trying to live your life and maybe you have a bad day and say something in hyperbole that you don’t really mean but you said it to the wrong person and now they are coming for you. You have no rights at this point. You can go peacefully or you can resist (I always fight) but you WILL be taken from your home whether you like it or not. The restraints are painful and you do not yet know what dank hole you are being taken to, you just want the pain and humiliation to stop. No you can not have your clothes, your shoes, your meds, your wheelchair nor any other assistive device because some clown thinks you will use it as a weapon (while you are handcuffed, hog tied, or strapped to a gurney). No wallet for you! No house keys, either. If you live alone maybe they lock the house. Your pets are on their own. You will be taken against your will and spend several hours under psyche hold at a facility until they get around to seeing you. It can take days and nobody on the outside will know where you are. Maybe they will feed you. The techs try but they are seriously underfunded and overworked. Eventually the psychiatrist will see you and decide your fate. You will either be turned loose or get admitted and spend the next two weeks of your life locked up against your will. They will try to pump you full of drugs. Most patients do not know or cannot articulate that they have the right of refusal for most meds under certain conditions. Some of the medications are experimental and dangerous. I was harmed by them. It happened. Such is the way of things here but it need not be so. A different way is needed!
Saint Dymphna is the patron Saint of people who suffer from nervous and mental disorders. My grandmother introduced her to me when I was little because I think she always knew that I was different and she also knew that my young life was filled with violence and chaos in my family and in my neighborhood; my grandmother knew I needed something powerful to get me through the worst this life would throw at me – my grandmother was highly intuitive and struggled with issues as well. She was a wonderful teacher and I appreciate her and miss her more the older I get. But I digress…
Dymphna was a young Irish princess born to a pagan king and a devout Christian mother. She was beautiful, smart, and beloved by all. Like many young girls at the time, she loved the Lord above all things and pledged her chastity to Jesus. Dymphna had what would seem a charmed life until her mother died. Dymphna’s father went insane with grief. The story gets very dark from there…
So unhinged was Dymphna’s father, Damon, that the King’s counselors suggested he remarry. Though he was still grieving for his wife, he agreed to remarry if a woman as beautiful as she could be found.
Damon sent messengers throughout his town and other lands to find woman of noble birth who resembled his wife and would be willing to marry him, but when none could be found, his evil advisors whispered sinful suggestions to marry his own daughter. So twisted were Damon’s thoughts that he recognized only his wife when he looked upon Dymphna, and so he consented to the arrangement.
When she heard of her father’s misguided plot, Dymphna fled her castle with her confessor, a priest named Gerebran, two trusted servants, and the king’s fool. The group sailed toward what is now called Belgium, and hid in the town of Geel.
Though it becomes uncertain what exactly happened next, the best-known version claims the group settled in Geel, where Dymphna built a hospital for the poor and sick, but in using her wealth, her father was able to discover her location.
When Damon found his daughter was in Belgium, he traveled to Geel and captured them. He ordered the priest’s head to be separated from his body and attempted to convince Dymphna to return to Ireland and marry him.
When Dymphna refused, Damon became enraged and drew his sword. He struck Dymphna’s head from her shoulders and left her there. When she died, Dymphna was only fifteen-years-old. After her father left Geel, the residents collected both Dymphna and Gerebran’s remains and laid them to rest in a cave.
In defense of her purity, Dymphna received the crown of martyrdom around the year 620 and became known as the “Lily of Éire. In 1349, a church honoring St. Dymphna was built in Geel, and by 1480, so many pilgrims were arriving in need of treatment for mental ills, that the church was expanded. The expanded sanctuary was eventually overflowing again, leaving the townspeople to accept them into their homes, which began a tradition of care for the mentally ill that continues to this day.
Unfortunately, in the 15th century, the original St. Dymphna Church in Geel burned to the ground, and the magnificent Church of St. Dymphna was erected and consecrated in 1532, where it still stands above the location her body was originally buried.
Many miracles have been proven to take place at her shrine in the church erected in her honor, and her remains were placed in a silver reliquary in the church. Some of her remains can also be found at the Shrine to Saint Dymphna in the United States.
The priest who had helped Dymphna was also sainted, and his remains were moved to Xanten, Germany.
The United States National Shrine of Saint Dymphna is at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Massillon, Ohio and St. Dymphna’s Special School can be found in ballina, County Mayo, Republic of Ireland.
Saint Dymphna is the patroness of those suffering nervous and mental afflictions as well as victims of incest.
Traditionally, Saint Dymphna is often portrayed with a crown on her head, dressed in royal robes, and holding a sword. In modern art, Saint Dymphna is shown holding the sword, which symbolizes her martyrdom, quite awkwardly. She is also often shown holding a lamp, while some holy cards feature her wearing green and white, holding a book and white lilies.
Prayer:
https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=222
Hear us, O God, Our Saviour, as we honor St. Dymphna, patron of those afflicted with mental and emotional illness. Help us to be inspired by her example and comforted by her merciful help. Amen.
For CENTURIES, the local community of Geel, Belgium, where Saint Dymphna was martyred, has exemplified what it means to provide compassionate and HELPFUL care to troubled people. It is my fervent prayer that more community efforts be put forward similar to what they do in Geel for our troubled and vulnerable people HERE, and Soon! Amen. I also long to make a pilgrimage to Geel for the help I think I truly need and I would also like to visit the National Shrine in Massillon, Ohio, God willing.
What happens in Geel is astonishing.
It is an approach to psychiatric care that has gone on in Geel (pronounced “hail”) since as early as the 13th century, archives show. The locals began building a church to St. Dymphna, the patron saint of mental illness, in the mid-1300s and pilgrims flocked to Geel. They lived in the local farmers’ homesteads, where they worked the land alongside their new families.
Both the tradition and the church still stand.
By the end of the 19th century, nearly 2,000 boarders lived among the Geelians, as the locals call themselves. Today the town of 41,000 in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, has 120 boarders in local homes.
That has made Geel both something of a model for a particular paradigm of psychiatric care and an outlier, often regarded over the centuries with suspicion (including by The New York Times, which, in a headlinefrom March 23, 1891, called Geel “a colony where lunatics live with peasants” that had been “productive of misery and evil results”).
Those suspicions only grew as Geel’s approach crushed up against the rising medical field of psychiatry. In more recent times, however, the town has come up for reconsideration as an emblem of a humane alternative to the neglect or institutionalization of those with mental illness found in other places.
“There has always been controversy about how ‘disturbed’ or ‘eccentric’ people should be treated,” wrote Oliver Sacks, the renowned neurologist, in 2007, in his foreword to the book “Geel Revisited,” an examination of 19 boarders over the course of decades.
“Should they be treated as ill, possibly dangerous, confined in institutions?” wrote Dr. Sacks, who died in 2015. “Or is there a chance that a more human and social approach, trying to reintegrate them into family and community life, a life of love and work, will succeed as well?”
For Dr. Sacks, who had visited Geel, the answer was to accept mental illness as individuality, rather than a stigmatizing disability.
Geel proves, Dr. Sacks concluded, that “even those who could seem to be incurably afflicted can, potentially, live full, dignified, loved and secure lives.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/world/europe/belgium-geel-psychiatric-care.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I would dearly love to see such efforts attempted in the United States and elsewhere. I do what I can with my little street/psyche ward ministry along with a few very kind and trustworthy friends but I’m messed up too and also living in extreme poverty so I am a little bit limited in what I can do versus what I want to do.
I have a thing I call #TheGoodening and I declare it a Revolution based on love, compassion, dignity, and kindness.
I know plenty of locked up people who could do just fine if they were simply treated like the free human beings that God created us to be.
Sometimes all a troubled person needs is a little bit of kindness, respect, and dignity. Amazing things can happen when punishment ends and treating the troubled as sick instead of criminal begins. #CrazyLivesMatter and who is who to judge whether a person is a simple misfit or a very troubled person. Something needs to change.
I pray I may be part of that change, God willing. I long to see less misery and more compassion among our own people.
Thank you for listening and reading. Please always pray for the truly vulnerable people and help out when you can. Peace be with you. I love you. God bless you.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
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