that take more than 15-20 minutes, do we add to a spiritual imbalance? Is this rushed way of life aggravating the very mental illnesses more people are seeking help for? What can people do to assist in their healing?
Spiritual practices such as mindfulness meditation (an offshoot of Buddhist practices) and varieties of Christian contemplative practices have also been helpful for those motivated to learn how to cope with pervasive symptoms of serious mental imbalances that are not easily released. These can often be learned and then practiced in groups associated with spiritual organizations or churches, as well as in weekend or weeklong retreats. One can find teachers who will teach the techniques for free.
Shealy and Church (2008, p. 25)’s research review found that spiritual practice and spiritual and religious beliefs have a marked positive influence on longevity and health. They have been found to:
•Improve the survival rate of patients after operations
•Ameliorate pain
•Raise levels of pleasure-inducing hormones in the brain
•Improve mental acuity
•Reduce depression
•Boost immune system function
•Reduce the time it takes wounds to heal
•Reduce the frequency and length of hospital stays
•Increase marital happiness in men
•Reduce alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking
•Reduce the incidence of cancer and heart disease
•Improve the health of older adults
•Add years to the average life-span
Spirituality involves each person in the quest for ultimate meaning and purpose in life. It supports connection to and relationship with the sacred dimensions of life and, with each other. A life directed by one’s spiritual intention is more likely, then, to move a person towards wellness.
Perhaps we have invested our financial resources into researching and treating serious mental illnesses primarily with drugs or our culture-specific modes of psychotherapy because we have let go of spiritual belief systems that previously gave meaning and context to our suffering, or we do not respect the resources available from other cultures because we are so wrapped up in material science. Watters (2010, p. 255) wrote:
What is certain is that in other places in the world, cultural conceptions of the mind remain more intertwined with a variety of religious and cultural beliefs as well as the ecological and social worlds.
Chapter Two: Approaching the Spiritual Side of Mental Illness
From Dysfunction to Extraordinary Functioning: One Man’s Path from Mental Illness to Mediumship
This is reprinted from Kardec’s Spiritism (Bragdon 2004, pp. 60-63). It is one of the clearest cases of a patient being assisted by the Spiritist integrative approach to helping someone diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Marcel Teles Marcondes came to Palmelo, Brazil in the spring of 2002. Although he had enjoyed a normal life (with no significant early trauma) with satisfying work as a travel agent, and many friends, he began to experience emotional problems when he was in his late 20s (in 1996). His father, Arnoldo Marcondes Filho, a bank manager for the Bank of San Paulo State, Banesba, was able to afford excellent medical care for his son, and took Marcel to the best psychiatrists in Sao Paulo.
Marcel was first diagnosed with depression, then schizophrenia. Anti-psychotics were prescribed as well as sleep medication. The prognosis: Marcel would have to manage his symptoms with these strong medications for the rest of his life.
But Marcel never felt well when taking the medications. When he was committed to a psychiatric clinic for twenty days, the hospital environment only added to his stress. His parents then tried touring Brazil with Marcel for eight months in a motor home, to help him relax. Marcel continued to experience bizarre delusions: seeing and feeling crabs and spiders crawling all over him, grabbing at him. He could turn unpredictably aggressive and hostile for periods of time. Sometimes, he would hear two to three voices in his head talking to him, simultaneously.
Although the family was Catholic and had been advised by their physicians not to trust the services of Spiritist healers, they took a chance and drove Marcel to Palmelo. He was committed to Euripedes Barsanulfo Hospital, a Spiritist psychiatric facility in Palmelo, and stayed there as an inpatient for one hundred days.
As an in-patient, Marcel continued on anti-psychotic medication, under the care of a licensed psychiatrist. Marcel also participated in the mainstream modes of therapy offered at the hospital: physical activity (playing soccer or gardening), occupational therapy, and attending group therapy three times a week. He also participated in the Spiritist activities, including private “laying-on of hands” performed by trained healer/mediums once a week, who transmitted healing energy to Marcel, without touching him. He would also have private sessions of medical intuition once a month.
“Disobsession” was performed by mediums three times a week in a group format to rid Marcel and other patients, individually, of negatively motivated disincarnates who had attached themselves to the energy field of the patients. This was not an exorcism as we know it, as there were no special rituals or incantations performed by a priest.
All of the Spiritist work was either supervised or done directly by Bartholo Damo, the spiritual head of the hospital. Soon after his arrival, Marcel was told by some of the hospital’s mediums that he was being troubled by spirits who had known him in past lives. Although initially disconcerting, this perspective proved to be very helpful, pointing him in the direction of very specific work he had to do to forgive himself and others, make amends, and thus find a way to regain his stability.
After several weeks of medical intuitive reading and disobsession, Marcel’s periods of violent aggression stopped, as did his delusions. He then began studying Kardec’s philosophy in the first books, “The Spirits’ Book” and “The
Mediums’ Book.” Damo was continually monitoring Marcel’s emotional stability, also his understanding of Kardecist philosophy. Damo could see, by indicators in Marcel’s subtle energy field (aura), that Marcel was a medium with healing abilities. This became more evident as disincarnate entities causing his obsessing were liberated. Marcel needed more study and supervision to gain conceptual understanding of spiritual realms and the practice of mediumship. Marcel also needed to come to terms with how his prior lifetimes had contributed to the internal stresses of the present lifetime.
I met Marcel twice in 2003, after he had done a considerable amount of study and skill building as a medium, under the direct supervision of Damo. Marcel was then functioning as a member of a team of healing mediums performing disobsession through laying-on of hands, and was still taking a minimal dose of psychiatric medications.
Johann Grobler, a psychiatrist from South Africa traveling with me, asked Marcel:
“Why does a person get possessed by a disincarnate entity?”
Marcel answered, “When the etheric body (a subtle energy field around the physical
