Mental health is one of the great social issues of our time. It is estimated that as many as one in four British adults will be diagnosed with a mental illness during their lifetime. That’s aside from the scale of mental health issues that are not simply medical. Loneliness, for example, is not a medical condition, but is undoubtedly a serious societal problem.

The scale of the issue is being recognised by the Church. There is a lead bishop on the issue, Bishop Richard Moth, and a mental health project run under the auspices of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. At a grassroots level there are dozens of projects run by Catholic churches and charities, from work by Children’s Societies identifying early signs of mental illness in schools, to chaplains in mental health trusts and parish visits to the lonely.