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Summary
- The Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” can be said slowly as a short prayer; the Orthodox Church in America says its silent hesychast method “requires always and without exception the guidance of a spiritual guide.”
- The Orthodox First Hour prayer “Thou who, at all times” asks God to “set aright our minds,” quoted from Hapgood’s 1906 service book.
- Short prayers cover racing thoughts, frightening voices, fear and suspicion, the medicine and doctors, a long illness, sleep, and the family during a crisis, a refusal of treatment and caregiver exhaustion.
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 1673) teaches that psychological illness “is a very different matter” from possession and “the concern of medical science.”
- Catholics ask the prayers of St. Dymphna; around her shrine at Geel, Belgium, families of the mentally ill were taken into local homes, as many as fifteen hundred at a time in 1909.
- Prayer goes alongside treatment: 988 (US), the NAMI HelpLine (1-800-950-6264), Samaritans (116 123) and, in Russia, 8 800 2000 122 for children, teenagers and parents.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Psalm 94:19; 139:12; Isaiah 42:3; Mark 5:15; Luke 18:13; John 10:27; Romans 8:39; Galatians 6:2). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- Orthodox Church in America. “The Jesus Prayer.” The Orthodox Faith, vol. 4, Spirituality. https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/prayer-fasting-and-almsgiving/the-jesus-prayer
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. The First Hour, p. 41. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Paragraph 1673. https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_two/section_two/chapter_four/article_1.html
- Kirsch, Johann Peter. “St. Dymphna.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05221b.htm
- National Institute of Mental Health. “Schizophrenia” (health topic). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia ; “Schizophrenia” (publication), Psychotic symptoms. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/schizophrenia
- Grover, Sandeep, Triveni Davuluri and Subho Chakrabarti. “Religion, Spirituality, and Schizophrenia: A Review.” Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine 36, no. 2 (2014): 119–124. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4031576/
- NAMI. “NAMI HelpLine.” https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. “Help Someone Else.” https://988lifeline.org/help-someone-else/
- Samaritans. “Contact a Samaritan.” https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
- Fund for Support of Children in Difficult Life Situations (Фонд поддержки детей, находящихся в трудной жизненной ситуации). Helpline for children, teenagers and parents, 8 800 2000 122. https://fond-detyam.ru/
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