Aspect of Need Addressed: SpiritualSearching the Internet this evening to learn about other supports for families afflicted by mental illness, I discovered something that I as a Catholic should have sought out sooner. I found out about the patroness saint of the mentally ill, St. Dymphna of Gheel.
Born in Ireland in the 700s, Dymphna was the daughter of an pagan Irish chief named Damon and his Christian wife, who died when Dymphna was an adolescent girl. Overwhelming in his grief, Damon searched the world to find another woman as beautiful as Dymphna's departed mother. But he could find no other like her.
His mind now addled, Damon turned his sights to his own daughter, who resembled her mother in all her beauty. Immeasurably distressed by her now mentally ill father's incestuous entreaties, Dymphna confessed the matter to her priest, St. Gerebernus, and then with him fled Ireland for Belgium, settling in Gheel. Through spies, her father discovered her whereabouts and eventually found her and her confessor in Gheel. Damon beheaded the priest and then once more demanded that Dymphna surrender to him. She again refused, upon which her enraged father killed her.
The site in Gheel where she died is today known for miraculous healings of the mentally ill. In the 1300s, Gheel became the site of a gentle form of deinstitutionalized psychiatric care, whereby mentally ill individuals would be placed in home care with host families. It is also known for a well-known sanitarium for the mentally ill which apparently still stands today.
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