Review article
Pastoral care for mentally ill person. Basic guidlines
Nikola Vranješ
; Catholic Faculty of Theology in Rijeka, University of Zagreb
Abstract
The pastoral care of sick people is one of the most demanding
activity fields of the Catholic Church. In that field the care for
all categories of ill persons, both physically and mentally ill, is
realized. At it, the Church first acts on the spiritual level, i.e. on
the realization of saving and harmonious encounter of man with
God. The care for mentally ill persons within the pastoral care for
sick people is a special area of activity within which the Church, by
its pastoral presence, first of all spiritually strengthens and helps
the sick respecting the options that can be achieved, in accordance
with the life determinants in which they are. In this article, in a
theological-evaluation way, the basic guidelines for the pastoral
care for mentally sick people are presented and analyzed. First, the
foundational postulates of the Church pastoral activity regarding
all the categories of the sick are analyzed, then the specifics and
demands of pastoral approach regarding the mentally ill persons
are presented, then the issue of interrelation of pastoral subjects
in the pastoral care for the sick is elaborated, having in mind the
primary responsibility of the bishop and his assistant priests, as
well as the shared responsibility of lay believers (primarily doctors
and nurses), and in the end some possibilities of action that
remain to be more strongly actualized in our pastoral practice
are elaborated. In the work the issues related to the pastoral care
for mentally ill persons are treated, primarily bearing in mind the
situation in the Republic of Croatia.
Keywords
Church; pastoral work; priest; patient; mental illness
Hrčak ID:
72140
URI
Publication date:
10.10.2011.
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