Do You Want to Be Well?

There is a miracle in the Gospel of John that has always mystified me. In John 5, Jesus encounters a paralyzed man who has been sitting by the Pool of Bethesda for 38 years. It had been a tradition in Judaism that when the waters of that pool were stirred up by an angel, the first person into the pool would receive healing; hence, there were a large number of sick surrounding the waters. When Jesus meets the man, He asks him a strange question: “Do you want to be well?”

What kind of question is that! Of course he wants to be well. Why wouldn’t anyone who has been sick for 38 years rejoice at the prospect of healing!

But the man responds, enigmatically, “Well, no one has ever helped me get down into the water, and when I try to go myself, someone else who is quicker arrives there first.” It’s not a “yes”—it’s an excuse.

Do you mean to tell me that after 38 years this man has never asked anyone to help him? Or that no one has ever offered—on the Temple grounds, no less? Or that he couldn’t simply wait there by the edge of the pool for the waters to be stirred up? And when Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, he seems to despair of it ever happening.

Or, perhaps, he doesn’t want to be healed because he has become so rooted in his identity of “disabled” that he can’t imagine life with functioning legs. After all, it’s hard to get a job and work; it’s easy to beg. It can be comforting to be the object of others’ pity. Sometimes health is more frightening than the easy familiarity of the status quo, even when, objectively, it is a disability.

Once again, our national conversation recently has turned to the topic of mental health. In the wake of the Lindsay Clancy trial, people have opined about the sorry state of our nation’s psychology, the lack of accessible mental-health resources, and the public attitude toward disorders that sometimes carry a negative stigma. All of this is very valid, and I’m glad the conversation is taking place.

At the same time, rather than focusing on the treatment of the symptoms, can we look at why the mental health of our nation is so distressingly bad? Statistics show that between 2010 and 2021, depression rose about 150 percent among our young people, with anxiety rising 140 percent among youth. On college campuses, mental illness diagnoses have risen about 120 percent during that same time period. Suicide rates and emergency visits for self-harm have similarly increased more than double. But why is this?

One theory is that mental illness is better diagnosed than in decades past. As the stigma slowly lessens and awareness increases, perhaps more people are seeking help. This could be true; but it could also be true that maybe there is an overdiagnosis of mental health issues. While mental-health disorders are very real and prevalent in our society, perhaps we are too quickly reassessing normal human struggles as mental health issues.

Here is an anecdote to illustrate my point. I recently trained a young man, 14 years old, to become an altar boy at my parish. He served twice and did a fine job, but then he dropped out. I asked him why, and he said, “Well, I have social anxiety.” This young man has a multitude of friends, is active on sports teams, and has a very outgoing personality. He simply got nervous when serving and self-defined that nervousness as “social anxiety.” That’s not a mental illness. That is a normal human reaction to doing something new in front of others.

How many people are legitimately sad because something bad happened—or, perhaps, they find life boring and dull—so they go out and get a diagnosis of depression? Perhaps a student finds themselves challenged with the amount of homework and peer drama—and the natural nervousness and stress they feel suddenly becomes a diagnosis of anxiety. I’m not saying that these are fictitious disorders in themselves; they are very real, and many people genuinely struggle with real mental illness. But some, if not many, have also interpreted natural human struggles as a mental illness, with unhappy results.

Of course, we have built ourselves a toxic culture that exacerbates the normal human struggles. Things that were once buffers for the stresses of daily life—such as a deep relationship with God, time spent in His creation, and meaningful relationships with others—have been subsumed by a polarized and ephemeral digital world. Doomscrolling, the endless online competition of likes and dislikes, and the addictive rewiring of the tech-infused brain has not been healthy for us. Daily life is frequently without the healthy and healing buffers that used to exist in our faith and community.

Secondly, we may be seeing an increase in mental illness because of malingering. Malingering, as we learn in psychology class, is the “intentional exaggeration of symptoms to gain a pleasing result or avoid unpleasant obligations.” The classic case is the kid with a slight cough who plays it up so that his parents let him stay home from school. But why would anyone want to have a diagnosis of mental illness?

Well, in today’s youth culture, having a mental illness can become a badge of identity. This seems strange, but I have observed it on many occasions. But what benefits could someone get from a mental illness diagnosis? To have a diagnosis of mental illness can elicit compassion and attention from others, especially when a person is feeling overlooked. Having a mental illness can mean that they are excused from work or school or other unpleasant tasks or get certain privileges.

An example: a woman came into my church one day with a teacup poodle in her purse. The dog sat with her through Mass and even came up with her when she received Communion. After Mass, I asked her about it, knowing that if I allowed her to bring a dog to church, that would set a precedent that could quickly devolve into chaos! She said it was her emotional support pet.

Later on in the conversation, she revealed that she was a teacher for a local school. I asked if the school allowed her to bring the dog to work; she told me no, they didn’t. Well, if you are okay being away from the dog for eight hours a day at work, you should be okay with being away for one hour in church, where God is supposed to bring you the comfort you need! She was very unhappy with my answer and accused me of being insensitive to her struggles. But bringing a dog to Mass is not a need, it is a want. She wanted to be treated differently because of her personal struggles.

Again, please don’t misunderstand; I am not saying that mental illness is an illusion. There are many people who truly have mental illness. This is a heavy cross to bear, which can be used for our sanctification as we unite it to the Cross. But I am saying that in our national conversation on mental health, we must observe dispassionately that many mental health struggles are overdiagnosed and that the distress we experience might be the result of a toxic culture that we have willingly enabled because it provides certain benefits.

So, we come to Jesus’ question: “Do you want to be well?” There are many people who may hesitate to say yes to that question. There are some simple ways to regain mental health that often remain unpursued by the very people who could benefit the most.

Recently, a young man in our youth group came to see me about his friend “Billy.” He was concerned that Billy was struggling with severe depression and anxiety. Upon further questioning, I could see why: Billy hadn’t been to church since his Confirmation several years before; he spent all of his free time playing video games and on his phone; he never exercised, and he drank so many Monster energy drinks that he couldn’t sleep.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in psychology to give a helpful prescription: begin praying and coming to Mass and Confession; spend time in nature; begin exercising; form real friendships with good and wholesome friends. Put down your phone. Take up a hobby. Listen to uplifting music and read good books. It’s not rocket science—it’s the very things that make us human and lead to fulfillment.

One might argue that it is very difficult for people with depression or anxiety to begin doing those wholesome things. Perhaps. But I would advise: just start small. Make one small change in your life in a positive direction. And ask God for the grace to take bigger steps, just as this disabled man in John’s Gospel would have to start moving toward the water in order to be healed. Maybe you’ll have some setbacks; but keep the trajectory going in the right direction.

The mental health of our country is not going to improve with just more psychologists or medication. It’s going to improve when we start to do the things that have led to human happiness for millennia. But first, as a nation, we have to ask ourselves the question that Jesus asked the man at Bethesda: “Do you want to be well?”