My interest in faith communities and mental health arises out of my experience with Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Atlanta over a period of 11 years, first as an aspirant for Holy Orders, then as a seminarian and deacon, and finally as its Vicar for over eight years. Holy Comforter has not been my only contact with people with a mental illness, however. Three of my maternal grandfather’s siblings spent significant portions of their lives in Bryce Mental Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for illnesses that my family never understood. In the early 1970s, when I served a small Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa, I visited them. During that time, a few patients from Bryce would visit my church. As deinstitutionalization began, a man and woman who had been visiting from Bryce were discharged. They married and took up residence in Tuscaloosa, continuing as members of my church. Later, I attended law school and worked on the editorial staff of a journal devoted to the interplay of law and psychology. That work introduced me to the legal principles driving deinstitutionalization and the right to treatment. During the quarter century of corporate legal practice that followed, mental illness receded from my consciousness, even though there were plenty of opportunities to attend to it: struggles of colleagues with mental health issues, the suicide of a fellow parishioner, another’s disclosure of her bipolar disorder, and occurrences of bipolar disorder, substance abuse, and depression within my family. Though I was able to ignore mental illness, it was always close at hand. Today I am dismayed by how easily I dismissed people with mental illness and how oblivious I was to their suffering. It took Holy Comforter to heighten my awareness of mental illness in our society and to provoke my curiosity about the church’s role in the lives of people with mental illness and their families, for at Holy Comforter mental illness cannot be ignored. Holy Comforter immersed me in the lives and struggles of more than 150 people living with chronic mental illness.

Michael A. Tanner

• Retired Episcopal Priest

  • Formerly, Vicar, Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, Atlanta

  • Canonically resident: Atlanta

  • Licensed: Western North Carolina

• Education

  • D.Min., University of the South-Sewanee

  • M.Div., Emory University

  • Coursework, Columbia Theological Seminary

  • J.D., University of Alabama

  • A.B., English, University of Alabama

  • A.A., Bible, Florida College

• Husband, Father of 5, Grandfather of 3

• NAMI Family-to-Family Mentor

• NAMI Family Support Group Facilitator

• Seeker

Copyright 2023. Michael A. Tanner