Mental/spiritual affliction Which one?
QUESTION? / COMMENT!
This question pertains to my sister who has been dealing with serious mental as well as physical health problems. The mental illness is particularly troubling as it includes severe psychosis: mostly paranoia, (sometimes hallucinations) with constant fear that people are in the parking lot ready to take her away. She cannot seem to free herself from negative thoughts, fear and sadness and bizarre ideations.
I pray the rosary with her and she remembers her prayers although she can’t always remember the prayers when praying alone.
A couple of days ago she revealed to me that she caught her husband “looking at girls” on the computer. Today she reiterated this. I asked her if it was pornography and she said yes. She told me he has been doing this for awhile. I believe she is telling me the truth because my husband needed to use their computer and noticed several pornography sites in the history. We did not mention this to my sister. What’s significant is that after my sister revealed what she knew to me, she started acting more like her former self. It was as if she had been “stuffing“ this for awhile and now finally revealed it to me, her sister.
She is Catholic, and scrupulous in her conscience, thinking everything is mortally sinful- sometimes avoiding receiving Holy Communion. Her husband is not Catholic and practices no organized religion. This has been a great source of suffering for her as she fears for his soul. I wonder how much of her affliction is spiritual. I don’t know how to help her. She is on psychiatric medication and even received Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) treatment for a year ( which reduced psychosis but depression persisted). The ECT has been discontinued by the hospital and medication doesn’t seem to be helping.
How do I go about finding a priest versed in such matters? Do you think there is a spiritual component to her mental affliction?
ANSWER! / COMMENT!
Of course everything you described has a spiritual component because we are 'body' and 'soul.' Can demonic affliction affect the psychological? Yes, the demon(s) go after the psychological.
Psychological (dictionary.com) adjective of or relating to psychology. pertaining to the mind or to mental phenomena as the subject matter of psychology. of, pertaining to, dealing with, or affecting the mind, especially as a function of awareness, feeling, or motivation: psychological play; psychological effect.
Fr Gabriel Amorth - Diabolical Obsession – (mental discomfort) symptoms include sudden attacks at times ongoing, of obsessive thoughts (like pornography, violence, lust, hate, anger, blasphemy against what is Holy) that the victim is unable to free himself of. Therefore the obsessed person lives in a perpetual state of desperation, prostration and attempts at suicide. Almost always, obsession influences your dreams. Only an expert and a well-trained eye can identify the differences between obsession and mental illness. Some symptoms are so inconsistent with known illnesses that they point with certainty to the evil origins.
About 25% of people are diabolically obsessed in the USA, Fr Ripperger - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyH7MUnP5Ic 36:20 to 36:44
Kyle Clement – In demonic obsession there is this constant demonic dialogue.
Book: True or False Possession? How to Distinguish the Demonic from the Demented – [‘Sophia Press’] *Possession looks a lot like mental insanity and mental insanity looks a lot like possession.
There can be a correlation between mental health/illness and confession. Carl Meneger in his book, Whatever Happened to Sin, wrote that 90 percent of the mental illness he was familiar with was traceable to the loss of the sense of sin. Sin is a real offense against God who is real and who loves us,, so the guilt it produces is real. When we offend God we need to say we are sorry. That being said, there were saints who experienced mental illness. St. Louis Martan, the father of St Therese of Lieseux, was afflicted with mental illness at the end of his life.
Step 1, she needs to make an appointment to see her Pastor, he functions as her 'General Practitioner.'