The Importance of Religiousity for Mental Health

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleЗначение религиозности для психического здоровья
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Asliturk, Miriam
5. lemma category Scientific theories and disciplines > Psychology-Psychoanalysis
6. Publication date 08-07-2018
7. lemma work Кондратьев Федор [Author]. Значение религиозности для психического здоровья
8. lemma manifestations Церковь и Биоэтика: Церковно-общественный совет по биомедицинской этике при Московской Патриархии.
9. Keywords mental health - Christian anthropology - Russian Orthodoxy - Frankl Viktor - depression - psychology - spirituality
10. Url Click Here
11. Citations
    1. <p>Кондратьев, Ф.В. (2008). Значение религиозности для психического здоровья. <em>Церковь и Биоэтика: Церковно-общественный совет по биомедицинской этике при Московской Патриархии</em>. Retrieved from: <a href="http://bioethics.orthodoxy.ru/analitika/eticheskie-problemy-psikhiatrii/297-">http://bioethics.orthodoxy.ru/analitika/eticheskie-problemy-psikhiatrii/297-</a> </p>
12. Lemma body

    1. The article explains that the World Health Organization (WHO) sees mental disease as a disorder in perception and analysis of objective reality, the inability to use memory, and a disorder in emotions and willpower. It also treats mental health more broadly, not only as an absence of psychic disorders. The author comments that this does not take into account one’s ability to experience serious psychological discomfort at the highest spiritual level without suffering from psychical diseases. While materialist psychology disregards this position (ie, there is no highest level of spirituality), the author posits that this highest level of spirituality is responsible for the integrity of one’s personality and therefore for psychic health.

       The author explains that the highest spirituality is directly linked to religiousness. Christian anthropology sees the human as unity of body, soul, and the spiritual. Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), key figure in existential therapy, also saw personality as having three levels: biological; psychological - responsible for control of behavior; and ethical - responsible for the explanation of meaning, ethics, and spirituality. A disorder on the highest level of personality can be caused by eternal existential questions that must be answered in order to solve conflicts in one’s life. If a person feels a spiritual vacuum, a meaningless sense of one’s existence, this can cause depression on a psychological level of personality. The author thinks that spiritual health brings order to lower levels of personality as well. The Orthodox view of God is not that of an abstraction but of the World in its entirety. Unconditional love toward God and love of the other as oneself are the solution for psychological health, according to Orthodox Christianity.

       Absence of any spiritual sense in life is the cause of depression. This happens especially to those who invested all their energy in wealth, which is a form of pride, according to the author. Post-traumatic stress disorder and drug addiction are widespread today because of lack of spirituality, especially in developed countries.