The Common Good, Catholic Social Thought, and Recent Mental Healthcare Policies in the United States: Protecting the Vulnerable and Empowering Agency in Shared Social Life

Promising to “Make America Great Again” and to “Make America Healthy Again,” the second presidential administration of Donald J. Trump has proposed and executed significant cuts to mental healthcare in the United States. These initiatives have imperiled millions of Americans, even as the administration has sometimes defended itself through appeals to the common good, Catholic social teaching, and Catholic faith. This article uses the common good as understood in Roman Catholic magisterial teachings and Catholic social thought to evaluate the administration’s mental healthcare initiatives. Although a few of the administration’s proposals might support the common good, overall, its policies undercut its own stated goals and, more crucially, violate the common good’s communitarian outlook and instrumental and intrinsic dimensions. In the hope of reaching those whom it largely criticizes, this article offers ways in which the Trump administration, conservative policymakers, and/or their supporters might reconsider these initiatives, the common good, and policymaking more generally. The article concludes by identifying trajectories for future research in Christian ethics on the moral agency of people with mental health challenges, the common good, and the continued integration of Catholic social ethics and Catholic virtue ethics.