Mark Licitra

Myth #8: Mental illness is the same as mental retardation.

April 25, 2009

Posted in: Uncategorized

About once a month when I am walking my dog, I run into this guy in my neighborhood and have a fairly predicatable conversation.

Neighbor: “Hey, there’s Ollie! I thought you guys moved or something.”

Me: “No, we’re still here. How’ve you been?”

Neighbor: “Can’t complain, you know. (follows with several complaints) Hey are you still at your job? You know I have an uncle who is retarded too. He can’t talk and stuff and I help him out sometimes. Anyway, its great that you help those people, we both know they need it.”

Me: blank stare.

Neighbor: “so do you have to give them baths and stuff?”

Me: “No, I actually work with people who have issues more like depression, addiction, schizophrenia, stuff like that.”

Neighbor: “Oh! I know what you mean- You know what they need? they need to get a job! I used to work at this place that hired people like that…” (this is followed by the story of the restaurant he once worked at where many addicts and depressed individuals were hired and subsequently cured by nothing more than “a little bit of elbow grease.”)

I know what you’re thinking (possibly). That I’m making too much of this conversation. That my neighbor is just trying to be friendly and I’m being cynical. Perhaps. You may also be thinking that this is a trivial thing to pick on, too minor to include in a list of just 10 myths about mental illness and that what really matters is that the right people are getting help, right? Why am I making a big deal about this?

It comes up all the time when I’m telling people about my job: searching for the right words in an effort to be inoffensive, someone will inevitably call the population I work with “mentally challenged,” “mentally retarded” or any other variation on that theme. I usually reply with a sentence not unlike the one in the conversation with my neighbor and we move on. No big deal. But it is a big deal, so I’d like to set the record straight here.

Mental illness is NOT the same as mental retardation. They may have some similarities, but they are different. Do we in the Church need to know what the differences are? Shouldn’t we just love people regardless of labels and diagnoses? I do think that there is one major difference that we should all be aware of, and that difference is the reason I included it in this list of myths, why I’m saying its a big deal.

Mental retardation, or developmental disabilities (DD- sorry, I have to abbreviate now) are far more acceptable in the Church than is mental illness (MI). No, the stigma has not disappeared from people suffering with a DD. But people with DD are generally not blamed for their problems, not accused of some heinous sin, and niether are their families. We consider it to be an unfortunate thing that just kind of happens. We also share truly inspirational stories in which heroic people leave everything they know to serve people with DD only to learn that they had more to learn than to give (think Henri Nouwen). We have some beautiful examples of people really being the hands and feet of Jesus to people with mental retardation. And we have equally beautiful examples of people realizing just how present God is in individuals who may never speak an intelligible word. In other words, we have learned from people with DD and have grown because of them. Let me ask though, when was the last time you heard someone say “I learned so much from that addict, or that schizophrenic?” These statements are very rare.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not at all trying to diminish the wonderful strides we have made in the Church regarding mental retardation. I am also not trying to suggest that we have arrived. In the church that I grew up in there is a young man who had a profound disability. Some of the adults were incredibly loving toward him, hugging and kissing and speaking to him like the part of our family that he is. In fact, watching those adults (including his parents, my parents, and a few other adults I respected) model that kind of love toward him was likely incredibly influential in my own life, though I never consciously thought about it until now. So I am deeply grateful for the hospitality and grace some members of the Church have extended toward individuals with DD, and for the example and inspiration they provide.

But I can’t help asking why we have not been able to extend this same hospitality and grace to those crippled by depression or those hearing voices or having bizarre beliefs. Why do we so rarely hug and kiss and speak to them like the part of our family that they are? It may be because of a fear not dissimilar from a fear we once had toward mental retardation. Or it may be because many people with mental illness don’t have the same obvious physical limitations, so its not as obvious to us that they are suffering.

I want to conclude by saying that I know I just took almost 1000 words to distinguish between mental retardation and mental illness in one way, but what I truly want is for the line of separation to disappear, the separation between all of us that is. There is after all no Jew or Greek, no black or white, no mentally ill or mentally retarded, we are all one in Jesus Christ.