Faith in Mental Health

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"One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three," I counted slowly and repeatedly in my head as I carefully cleansed my hands. The counting was - at this point - second nature to me; it was part of me. I returned to the waiting area where I lowered my body onto a bench. I could feel the strong scent of incense, burned into the wood. As I waited for my parents to finish their monthly visit to the church psychologist, I couldn't help but think about the magazines that my sister had brought for me. Big bold letters read 'ANXIETY' and "OCD" with pictures of individuals in complete distress. Abruptly, my parents swung the door open and called for me to join them. After a moment I found myself being questioned by the psychologist. He asked a long series of questions about my habits of counting. Eventually, tears ran down my cheeks. The man slowly got out of his seat, hugged me and said a prayer that wasn’t beneficial to my mental health because I didn’t understand faith. As the time dragged on I lost count since I was starting to fear being different. When I was six years old, religion and social media was not the right approach for my obsession. This was due to the fact that I understood neither and hence they never had a significant influence. As I grew older, however, I started to understand my faith and I suddenly realized the importance of those tears. They were the things that made me human, unlike the indifferent emptiness of the magazines' pages. Faith can be a useful technique in mental health treatment. However, bias and lack of understanding that is carried from both sides can often limit progress in mental health.
Faith and psychology have a history of differences. Beginning with Sigmund Freud, much of the mental health field at most a...

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...ort in searching beyond themselves for power, hope and understanding (Tepper 2001). At times when psychiatry doesn’t recognize an individual’s faith it can be hard for a patient to find improvement in their illness. Psychiatry for the most part focuses solely on the mind and body but fails to recognize the spirit. Therefore, many individuals feel frustrated and hopeless with tradition psychiatric treatments when they try to find explanations beyond science and physicality. This can lead to potentially dangerous situations in which patients no longer have faith in their psychologist and deny treatment, some turning solely to their faith. If psychologist were to recognize faith and utilize it as a coping method integrated with psychology, patients can feel comfortable when considering recommendations by their psychologist, while maintaining their personal beliefs.

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