Using technology, experts offer advice on people with mental illness

Published: 2007-10-11

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A psychiatrist and a hospital chaplain offered advice to a nationwide audience Oct. 10 about how to support people with mental illness and their families at their parishes. But the audience members were not gathered together in one room. Instead they were sitting at computer screens -- some alone, some in groups -- at 50 sites from coast to coast for the first "Webinar" sponsored by the National Catholic Partnership for Disability and its year-old Council on Mental Illness. The hourlong seminar, conducted over the World Wide Web, was part of the Washington-based organization's observance of National Mental Health Awareness Week, Oct. 7-13, and took place the day after the National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding, Oct. 9. Dr. Thomas P. Welch, a psychiatrist in private practice in Portland, Ore., and chairman of the Interfaith Council on Mental Health in Portland, said parish staff members are often "the first responders to people experiencing mental health crises." In that group of first responders he includes "clergy, religious, educators, the secretary, the janitor and the groundskeeper."

Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .