St Dymphna prayer for anxiety and mental illness

Saint Dymphna, young martyr of Geel, you knew what it is to live under the shadow of a mind that has lost its way; your own father's grief turned to madness and cost you your life. From heaven you have become the friend of all whose minds are troubled. Be my friend today.

Pray for (name, or me), who is struggling with anxiety that tightens the chest, with depression that drains the color from every day, with thoughts that will not stop or will not come, with illness of the mind that others do not understand. Ask the Lord to bring calm, to bring light, to bring the small daily strength to get up and try again.

Guide those who help: the doctors and therapists, the nurses and counselors. Give them wisdom in treatment and patience in listening. Bless the medications that help and give discernment about them. And bless the families who carry this burden alongside the one who is ill, who are so often exhausted and afraid.

Pray that the stigma around mental illness may lift, as it has in your town of Geel, where the sick have been welcomed into ordinary homes for seven hundred years. Let the Church be that kind of home.

Lord Jesus, You cast out fear and restored the troubled to their right mind. Through the prayers of Saint Dymphna, grant peace to the anxious, hope to the depressed, and healing to all who suffer in mind and heart. Let them know they are not alone and not ashamed. Saint Dymphna, pray for us. Amen.