Deacon and Wife Build on Personal Experience to Launch Diocese’s First Mental Health Support Group

A great idea that shows diakonia in action, via KPCC in California:

The push by evangelists Rick and Kay Warren to persuade religious leaders to start attending to their congregations’ mental health needs is gaining some traction, following their second large conference on the topic last month. At St. Irenaeus Catholic Church in Cypress, change came even before the Warrens’ initiative, thanks to a church deacon and his wife.

Jerry and Jo Ann Pyne were on an emotional roller coaster for 30 years. Their daughter Jana was rebellious, abused alcohol and drugs and went long stretches without being able to hold a job.

They didn’t know what was going on. They felt like bad parents.

Jerry says when Jana was about 33, she called him one day at work.

“She … said she wanted to commit suicide. That was the first time,” he says. ” Oh my God, I just was absolutely shocked.”

It took another 10 years before Jana, now 47, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. To better understand what that meant, Jerry says he and Jo Ann took a 12-week course for families through the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI.

“I was always angry with [Jana] because I couldn’t understand why she could do so well at things and never finish,” he says. “It wasn’t until we went to NAMI family-to-family, that I had an epiphany that it wasn’t her, it was the disease.”

The couple went on to get trained by the organization to lead support groups.

That got the Pynes thinking about their church. They had never sought help from the church because they didn’t feel religious leaders would know what to do or say, Jerry says.

They went to their priest at St. Irenaeus Catholic Church in Cypress, where Jerry is a deacon. Jo Ann says the priest approved their request to start a support group.

“There are so many people in our pews sitting there suffering from the sadness, the frustration, the anger, and have nowhere to go,” says Jo Anne. Now “they at least know … there is a place they can come and talk.”

It became the first mental health support group in the Orange County Catholic Diocese.

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Photo: KPCC / Southern California Public Radio