Bishop, local Catholic psychologist speak on family and mental health in USCCB video
At left, John Cadwallader—a Catholic, a clinical psychologist and the founder of Central Psychological Services in Indianapolis—is shown speaking in a recent U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops video called “Mental Health Roundtable on the Family.” Listening are moderator Maura Moser, second from left, Bishop James D. Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska (partially obscured), and clinician Virginia Madden (back to camera). (Screenshot from “Mental Health Roundtable on the Family” video)
By Natalie Hoefer
Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Neb., came from what he calls a “stable family.” He didn’t have “any trauma in my childhood” or “anything mental health struggles can be traced back to.”
But by 2019 he had to admit: “I was anxious and I was fearful, and I was getting depressed.”
Bishop Conley published a pastoral letter in May of 2024 about his mental health journey called “A Future with Hope.”
“I wanted to tell my story, my own journey and struggles in the area of mental health, but also offer some sort of resource for people and hope for a future,” he said in a Mental Health Roundtable on the Family video addressing mental and spiritual wellness in the family. The 32-minute video is one of three Roundtable Discussions on Mental Health videos released this year by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
Two Catholic mental health professionals also participated in the family-themed video, including John Cadwallader, a clinical psychologist and the founder of Central Psychological Services in Indianapolis.
Bishop Conley launched the discussion by recalling what led to his mental health spiral, an issue not uncommon today: stress.
When ‘just work harder’ doesn’t work
“The burdens of the leadership [of a bishop] became really, really intense in a lot of ways” for Bishop Conley in 2018.
It started with the renewed U.S. clergy sexual abuse crisis. In the midst of dealing with the “terrible tragedy,” he was under pressure to turn over all diocesan personnel files dating back to 1940 for an investigation of Nebraska’s three dioceses launched by the state’s attorney general.
Meanwhile, the diocese had to close two schools, “which was very traumatic,” said Bishop Conley. Then his sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and a young priest in his diocese died suddenly.
He’d been raised that “if it’s tough, you just work harder. … I went days, weeks, months without getting a good night’s rest,” he said, his mind busy trying to find solutions.
But by the spring of 2019, he realized that “not only was I not sleeping, but I was anxious and I was fearful, and I was getting depressed.”
He saw a doctor and was diagnosed with anxiety and major depressive disorder. He started taking medication and seeing a therapist—but by the fall he saw little progress.
Finally, in November, Bishop Conley asked his superior representing Pope Francis for time off and was granted a temporary leave of absence.
He left in December of 2019 to stay at a retreat center in Phoenix.
Then the COVID pandemic hit in March.
“That added a whole other layer because I was out of my familiar surroundings and everything became isolated,” Bishop Conley recalled.
But friends he knew in Phoenix were there for him, as well as a doctor, a psychotherapist, a psychiatrist and “a very good spiritual director.”
What was supposed to be a few months’ leave turned into the blessing of an 11-month break.
His first year back “was bumpy and rocky,” said Bishop Conley. “I was still on a lot of medication. I was still sort of fragile.” His mother’s death in December of 2020 was “another big blow.”
But with his continued therapy, medication and support from friends, the bishop “kind of got better.” He got “more traction in 2022 and 2023, and each year since then, it’s gotten better and better.”
Bishop Conley still takes medication and continues to see his therapist “from time to time.” And he is “very serious” about seeing his spiritual director once a month.
‘Lack of contact with reality’
Reflecting on Bishop Conley’s experience, Cadwallader noted the impact of a schedule that stretched the bishop too thin.
The same could be said for many families, he noted.
“We’re so busy in Western culture, whether it be extracurriculars or just demands at school,” he said.
Overuse of social media and the internet are also major contributors to mental health issues—on many fronts— Cadwallader continued.
“Being bombarded with information” can lead to stress and anxiety” in both teens and adults, he said.
When Bishop Conley noted that excessive screen time can cause a “lack of contact with reality” and of “real friendships” for young people, Cadwallader agreed, adding that too much time online makes it “very hard for them to be in the here and now.”
He also expressed concern about the mental health issues that can result from young people’s online exposure to pornography.
“I’ve read estimates of where young people are first introduced to pornography around ages 11 to 12, and some even as young as 8 to 7,” Cadwallader said. “It becomes something which is very dangerous, certainly as far as sin, but it also creates this sense of an unhealthy substitute.
“They’re not getting loved by their parents. They’re not being loved by their family, their closest friends. They’re not talking to God about this, too. They tend to go to these creature comforts, which actually makes it much worse.”
Introduction to and pursuit of online pornography at a time when “their brains are forming” can “create a lot of dangerous things down the road in terms of how relationships are viewed, leading to trouble developing healthy relationships as they mature,” Cadwallader added.
“Parents must realize [their children are] going to find” online pornography, he said. They must consider how to help their children understand “this is not really the beauty that God has intended for our bodies and love and sexuality, and to kind of help them see that this is a distortion of it, [which] is a very sad thing.”
But the stress that parents themselves are experiencing—or their own excessive use of screen time—can make them unavailable to their children, Cadwallader noted.
“Children will go to their parents and want to talk about [their] concerns,” he said. “And parents may be, like, ‘In a bit,’ and they’re going through their phone. Or it’s other kinds of obligations they have, too. And children unintentionally begin to learn that they have to bear [their issues] alone.”
‘The greatest gift they can give their children’
Parents can help resolve their children’s schedule and online-related mental health issues—and heal themselves in the process.
“The mental health of parents … is the greatest gift they can give their children,” said Bishop Conley.
Cadwallader agreed, noting that “when parents lead by example, it also gives the children permission to care for their mental health.”
Take screen time, for example.
If a parent is “always looking at [their] phone, that’s sending a signal to everybody else that it’s OK,” the bishop said.
Cadwallader recommended that parents set aside family time each week that is “technology free.” (Related story: The importance of managing online time for mental health of adults and children)
“Maybe it’s Sunday evenings,” he said. No TV, no watching movies, time to “just talk” or “play a board game,” he suggested.
“It starts to introduce the sense of silence and being together, or even just the sense of play, how that’s some part of what God wants us to be able to do to feel loved and close.”
In his mental health recovery, Bishop Conley also discovered “the importance of an experience of beauty in our life.”
“I try to listen to a piece of music, to read a poem, to go for a walk outside and to play with my dog every day,” he said. “Sometimes it’s only five minutes, but you have these contacts with things that are truly good and beautiful, and that brings joy to your life.”
Cadwallader agreed.
“Give yourself something good that actually is something you can achieve,” he said. “Just start small. Just put one foot in front of the other. You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A walk around the block—even if it’s just 15 minutes—it’s been proven that is good for mental health.”
Elements of the Catholic faith can also provide help in healing mental health issues. Cadwallader noted that the Church, “even down to the parish level, is starting to create opportunities for the mental health and mental health care of their parishioners.”
Such help stems from the “intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church [which] gives us the ideal in Jesus Christ as a human person and human flourishing,” said Bishop Conley.
“And so not only are we very attentive and appreciative of all of the natural elements to good health and flourishing, but also the supernatural, the sacramental life, prayer, spiritual direction, those kinds of things.”
The bishop said he points out to his diocese’s seminarians that they’re “not shameful about going to spiritual direction.”
Just so, he tells them, they “shouldn’t be shameful about [going to] counseling … because it’s all part of the whole person. We’re mental and physical, body and soul.”
(“Mental Health Roundtable on the Family” is one of three USCCB videos addressing mental health. The series also includes “Mental Health Roundtable on Young Adults” with Bishop Robert E. Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minn., and “Mental Health Roundtable on Clergy” with Dallas Bishop Edward J. Burns and other experts. The videos can be viewed at tinyurl.com/USCCBMentalHealthVideos.) †
Related: All are invited to Mental Health and Addiction Ministry Mass with Archbishop Thompson on Aug. 13
