Annual Forum Discusses Spirituality in Mental Health

Psychologists, Christians, and community members interested in how religious beliefs affect mental health gathered this past Friday for the Universitys annual Veritas Forum. This years forum, titled Making Sense of Mental Health, explored the combination of the physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of mentalillness.

We picked the topic in conjunction with Veritas, our mother-body organization, and we pick topics that we think are relevant to current affairs, said forum co-director Chando Mapoma 16. This year we picked disabilities and mental health because [those topics have] been in the news a lot. [Evangelical Christian pastor] Rick Warrens son killed himself, and he was mentally unstable, and thats been in the news. I also think its something thats not talked about a lot. We wanted to shed more light on it from a Christiancontext.

Mapoma organized the event along with forum director Jinsol Hyun 15, financial directors Youngbo Sim 15 and Joshua Lee 16, publicity director Jamie Jung 16, and outreach directors Tae Hee Kim 15 and Shirley Deng 14. The students worked with sponsors such as the Catholic Students Organization, Wesleyan Christian Fellowship, and the Office of Religious and SpiritualLife.

The discussion featured Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Vice Chair at Duke University Dan Blazer and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale School of Medicine Nii Addy, as well as University Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Jennifer DAndrea, who served asmoderator.

Blazer asserted that spirituality is highly tied to a psychologists approach to treating patients with mental healthissues.

Depression is at once biological, psychological, social, and spiritual, and if we try to disentangle that, we miss some very important points, Blazer said. Depression in my view is always a spiritual challenge because it has a way of undermining so much of who we are. [Medical approaches] all can be helpful, but we have to look at trying to heal the soul, as well as the psyche and thebody.

He also addressed how psychologists can incorporate this into theirwork.

Therapists need to listen to not just what seems to be on the surface, they need to be listening underneath, Blazer said. If we listen underneath, I think well hear about the spiritual, and that will enable us then to be able to work with the person more on a spirituallevel.

Questions and conversation covered a range of topics, from how to balance a spiritual and medical approach to how social media affects our ability to communicate with others. Addy explained how social media can both assist and deter the human connection necessary for thisprocess.

Ive seen people who have been able to isolate themselves more easily because of social media, Addy said. But at the same time, Ive also seen people who have been willing to share more in a social media setting and have been more willing to have other people walk them through certain situations.... Its a mixed bag, and were still trying to figure out the balance point, but there are efforts to try to use social media in positiveways.