Of course it is not always easy to tell whether someone has a psychotic illness or not and sometimes a psychosis will make someone act in ways that may be dangerous. Jesus did not fear him, rather he met him and helped him. In modern terms it seems that the man called Legion had a psychotic illness. Jesus casts the legion of demons into a herd of swine, which then fall off the cliff and are destroyed. They actually were following Query 3, which asks, ‘Are you following Jesus’ example of love in action?’ One of my favourite stories about Jesus is where he meets the man who says that he is called Legion. Luckily for me my Meeting was very supportive when I was in hospital and several times Friends came there to have a Meeting for Worship with me. Sadly this all too often means that sufferers and their families are left feeling very isolated and unsupported and definitely unequal members of society. Of course it is not in itself so, but I feel that the perceived danger is of opening up things, which society’s normal expectations would prefer to hide. It is still as though mental illness is contagious and simply talking about it is dangerous. This usually leads to sufferers and their families becoming very isolated. The fear and misunderstanding create a vicious circle that is unbreakable without courage. I know this because their knowledge of my own illness has allowed us to talk to each other without the – unfortunately common – fear of misunderstanding.
I am aware of several people in my Area Meeting who have lived with various kinds of mental illness. That must mean that many more have at least second-hand experience of it. The available statistics show that ten per cent of us experience mental distress significant enough to be labelled as illness at some time in our lives. What has not encouraged me is to see how wary people (including Friends) still are of the whole subject. I have been encouraged over the past year to see several contributions to the Friend on various aspects of mental illness. Isobel Lane says that there are tools to deal with mental illness
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