A bridge over troubled water, confronting mental health challenges in Cambodia

Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers has pioneered in developing a range of services to help people with mental illness. People with mental illness are stigmatized in this society as they are in many other countries. Today, we ventured in to some of the poorest neighborhoods in Phnom Penh to visit individuals who have received mental health service through Maryknoll to see their effects. It is hard to describe the crowded streets, dirt roads and back alley ways we passed to get to the house to visit a mom and her two daughters, both in the forties, who had schizophrenia. Until the community mental health workers from Maryknoll arrived to offer this mom help, she was alone to care for her daughters. One daughter was so difficult to manage she had to be chained in her room to prevent her from hurting herself or others.

Only a few of us managed to get to the little house which was surrounded by water, bogs and sewage after the raining season. To get across the streams of water we had to step on rocks, boards and bricks placed every few feet and balance ourselves so we would not fall in the muck. But we were not alone. The mother of the women kept encouraging us to come, cross the troubled waters and enter her home. Not knowing a word of Khmer, the language here, I used hand signs and a family gave me an old polled to help keep my balance as I navigated the rocks and boards. Part way out, reaching a shaking rock, another young person from the village held my hand to steady me as I jumped from rock to rock. And a boy who could not have been more than eight fetched another rock and placed it in the stream of dirty water to make our crossing easier.

With the help of these villages and the grace of God we visited the mom and her daughters. They

But it took the community to get us over the troubled waters to that little house stranded in the mud. That is why Jesus gave us each other. To be a community, a family, a bridge over troubled waters to those in need. were so grateful to see us and offered us the few chairs they had to sit down. Both sisters are doing much better because of the mental heal the services they receive. There is no need to chain them anymore; they are free and on the path to wellness.