A pilot program to include spirituality in mental health care
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
However... it's not like people haven't been self-treating with religion since time immemorial. Certainly longer than psychiatry. And it's usually cheaper than a therapist. So people tend to try that first, and go for a medical route only after religion has failed them.
The article cites a study with some positive results, but psychiatry is an area rife with unreproducible studies. This seems to warrant more study, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are a lot of contradictory results.
I'd really like to see it work. It does seem reasonable that some patients find spirituality to be a tool for coping, and psychiatry can benefit from that. At the least it sounds as if it shouldn't be, "Well, religion failed you, now let's chuck it and try something different."
A person who writes about how he doesn't believe in atheism, stating his "secular" client believes in god and such... In a country that is 80%+ Christian... Even if he had an atheist client, they would leave his practice as soon as he continued to insist that they pray and talk to priests as a solution to their problems... It's a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact that the author ignores that entirely makes me fairly convinced that he's advocating to proselytize, not to introduce people to spirituality. (Part of me wants to book a session with them and talk to them about wood fairies, just to see what happens :)
If you can get that in spirituality, awesome, but I don't think spirituality itself is the actual fix - it's the people you share your beliefs with that help. Community and that, it's a thing humans do (and haven't been able to do in a while)
Imagine being "prescribed" 50mg of caffeine in the morning - certainly a therapeutic dose of a psychoactive chemical - but instead of taking an abstract pill, you are to incorporate the ritual of teamaking into your morning routine. You are to take the time to do it carefully and properly, and to savor the experience of drinking it, and to use the time to reflect on some aspect of life - perhaps one that your therapist suggests.
Is this not a plausibly useful treatment? Might you call the experience of venerating the act of making tea in some way spiritual? Spiritual things need not invoke nonsense - they just have to touch the human spirit.
A couple years after that I had a friend that was going through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with a psychiatrist, a really good one from what I could tell I might add, my friend let me read through the CBT book. Turns out, it's nearly identical to what the ideas Buddhism tries to teach, with all the religious aspect stripped away.
It's essentially the same concept though. Being mindful of patterns of behaviour or thoughts that lead to negative actions or mind states and the tools you can use to conciously avoid and correct them.
It really seemed to help my friend and honestly, it seems like something that would be good for everybody to learn.
I've read that the roots of CBT were founded on stoic philosophy, so perhaps there is a connection.
Thank you, I'll have to do some reading it seems. The way different philosophies, myths and religions travelled around the world and evolved over time has always fascinated me. So much still is based on things from hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.
I think the OP was implying it was the other way around. I.e., Cynicism (and thus Stoicism) draw from Buddhism. It seems like Siddhartha Gautama predates Antisthenes by nearly 150 years. (Granted, that doesn’t mean that ideas between them weren’t shared later, it just indicates which was started first)
First the dates aren’t that clear. Gautama Buddha was born between 563 BCE or 480 BCE. Antisthenes was born in 446 BC. So he’s between 38 and 117 years more recent, though they both lived to ~80, so it’s possible they where alive at the same time.
Anyway, it’s obvious similar ideas in different places where very contemporary to each other. What’s unclear is what these philosophers where culturally exposed to. Basically, we can’t trace which ideas they came up with and which ones they copied unless we find an older source, as such it’s impossible to say the origins of such things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_monasticism
Gandharan Buddhist art is steeped in Greek stylization and the first images of the Buddha followed Greek stylizations - early Buddhists didn't depict the Buddha at all, just symbols like empty footprints, it wasn't until Greek contact that this began.
Thomas McEvilley's _The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies_ has an interesting discussion of similarities between earlier Stoic texts by Sextus Empiricus and some works of Nagarjuna (one of the most important Mayahana philosophers) that use the same arguments, metaphors, and structuring. He goes over a number of other ancient sources, Greek and Indian, describing various sorts of cultural contact and interchange.
Pre-Hellenistic contact between the Greeks and India occurred but we can only speculate about it since there's no reliable evidence. After Alexander there was a lot of interchange and it had a big impact on Indian art, architecture, theater, and culture (as well as bringing significant influence of Indian stylization, philosophy, etc. on Greek Hellenistic kingdoms in Bactria and India).
Amusingly, I first wondered about this while reading about Diogenese and later mendicant cynics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
Edit: less on topic, but I've always thought that Jehosephat was an interesting confection, too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat
It's no real surprise that, for example, confession and talk therapy are extremely close cousins. People seem to fundamentally need to put words to ideas and fears and sadness and stress and angst, and in putting words around those things we can hope to control our reactions to them better.
Doing this with a guide who is there to tell you that no matter what, you matter, and probably give you some rituals to do that'll settle your mind a bit, has proven to be durably useful for approximately ever. Whether you call that person "your therapist" or "your priest" or "your imam" or "this monk i talk to sometimes" seems more or less secondary.
When I started doing this part, it was quite weird to say my mistakes both out loud or quietly, but as time kept going, I found that it is such a good form of dealing with our errors. When we try to say it in form of phrases, we have to first understand it minimally, then, we can say it and see that it is not as bad as we thought (or it is even worse...), we feel shame, we try to justify it, we try to explain it, but in the end the one listening is just the person, the walls and Gd the almighty.
I've done years of therapy, but never before I have felt more listened to. There is something special, a special kind of circuit, when we say things that we don't want to say to ourselves. We break it, externalize, hear it, internalize and every day and every day. It is funny how the problems dissolve, how some become actions, how some persist.
Of course, I still talk to my parents, my SO, my friends, my rabbi and even my therapist from time to time. But I hope that someone on this forum can use this comment to try and succeed in talking to yourself.
When those prayers get answered, usually not in the way that you'd expect, you learn to do it more often.
Anecdotal, I know, but I've noticed a pattern that the most likely prayers to be answered are the ones where I'm praying for something that God would want for me; help forgiving someone when I can't let it go, breaking a bad habit, being a better husband or father, connecting with someone who needs help and guidance.
I don't believe this for a second. The author has a gigantic conflict of interest comparing his own philosophy (which he has attempted to transfer to a number of other therapists) and this article.
I we want to have reasonable information about this then it will take other people with no connection to the author who attempt to repeat his treatments. That's not going to happen.
This article disgusted me. If you're going to use a psychological placebo you better have a valid treatment to compare it.
And how easy to throw the term "spirituality" around without defining it. There's no evidence a god exists and there no evidence that spirituality exists as a physical manifestation.
In the USA, this is how the dealeo usually works:
1. If you don't have good insurance, or not wealthy, you don't have Talk Theraphy sessions with the Psychiatrist.
2. You usually have to find a MFCC, and yak away until the Psychologist gives you a recommendation to a Psychiatrist. (They all that their favorites,)
3. You finally see the Psychiatrist. He quickly determines if you need meds. The honest ones will tell you about current studies, like long term Schizophrenia patients seem to due better long term without medications. (This is a tough call.), or the evidence of efficacy of depression drugs is murky at best. (This will never come out of most doctors mouths. Placebo is their bread and butter.)
4. Ok you find a medication that works.
5. Many medications that actually work are habit forming. This is a problem.
6. A medication that works costs money, and it's not just the price of the drug.
7. It's those mandatory pricey office visits.
8. A psychiatrist can drag you in every week, or day, in order to ok those scripts. (most keep them at 6 weeks, or much longer if the patient does not want to come in.)
9. It get's irritating, and expensive.
10. I would like to see a federal law stating you only need to see a doctor once a year if you are on a drug long term. You obviously can't be a danger to society.
In fact, I would like to limit mandatory office visits for most medicines. Say you have been on a high blood pressure drug for years, you should be able to get refills in most cases without seeing a doctor.
11. You will never see a hard cap on mandatory office visits. That is how the Psychiatrists/MD's affords that very comfortable lifestyle.
Plus---the AMA knows the rap, and protects their members money. (Yes--it's more nuanced than I am writing write now, but the mandatory office visits for well functioning patients is expensive. And what is well functioning? You got me. By the time you end up in the Psychiatry office, and on meds, you life is never quite the same, and most doctors know that.
The one's that exploit their patients for money should be looked at, or delicenced.
As a very non-spiritual person it didn't do anything for me
It's like you are about to have surgery and the surgeon insists on performing an animal sacrifice to ensure the success of the surgery.
I would not see such a surgeon and I will not see a psychologist who wants to involve imperceptible deities in my treatment.
Whatever his beliefs are he should not involve his patients in it.
There's a certain pop-culture psychologist who I won't name but applied issues which to some extent derive from at least the Western Traditions of spirituality include things such as 'assuming responsibility', 'building character', at least some 'devotion to something greater than oneself', 'community' etc..
And certainly both Eastern and Western traditions use terminology such as 'surrender' etc..
I think because a lot of these classical principles come along with some things people don't like they might tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Maybe start with that instead of some holistic mumbo-jumbo.
It makes sense that spirituality could help many by taking them OUT of this inward focus to look at other people, at longer time frames, at greater meanings and purposes in life, and to help put today's worries into perspective.
Looking for god is just one way among many to be more spiritual.
And further more, many psychologists do this already. There are many psychologists that specialize in patients of a particular religion. The LDS church comes to mind. They have no better success record than any other treatment.
"Scientific" American, my ass.
Furthermore, psychologists already do this. They already recommend taking to family, friends, pastors, etc.
The author is lying. I stand by the statement that he is lying. He is presenting an imaginary situation where doctors ignore solutions that demonstrate results. That simply isn't the case. If the results were there, it would be done. And it is done.
The author isn't asking for doctors to suggest people talk out their problems with religious figures, he's advocating for religion instead of scientifically backed care. I don't care how many articles he publish in some non-peer reviewed junk source like Psychology Today.
If you choose to conflate the two, that's on you.
Your thoughtful comments are welcome.
p.s. Camus was more nuanced than that.