The role of spirituality in depression treatment

¶ … Role of Spirituality in the Treatment of Depression

Studies have shown that spirituality can have a positive impact on patients who suffer from depression (Stanley, 2011). And researchers have produced historical evidence that links religion and/or spirituality to the treatment and overall improvement of patients who suffer from what today are DSM-IV classified disorders (Kyziridis, 2005). Religion and/or spirituality can be shown to be a driving force in the changing of people's lives -- from Florence Nightingale who instituted the first professional women's nursing corps during the Crimean War (and considered herself to be called by God) to Mother Theresa, whose work with the poor in India has been shown to be a great boon to those suffering in poverty. Religion and/or spirituality add a significant meaning and dimension to lives that would otherwise be empty. Human beings are, after all, not solely economic, social, and political creatures -- they are also spiritual (Mohr, 2006).

As Plato remarked, "If head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul," and Theocharis Kyziridis (2005) notes that the ancient Greeks had a rather humane and rational view of the relation between physical illness and spiritual malady. In fact, the wisdom of the Greeks would serve as the foundation for Western civilization throughout the life of the middle ages. Only with the dissolution of the West through the abdication of Thomistic philosophy and the advancement of Enlightenment science did the modern age attempt to compartmentalize the physical and the spiritual. This paper, however, will show how spirituality can effectively play a role in the treatment of depression and why it should be given more consideration in healing what Walker Percy has called modern man's "malaise."

As many researchers have shown, religion offers people a kind of confidence when illness strikes. Faith in the power of the supernatural has been seen as advantageous in the treatment of illness (Doolittle, Farrell, 2004). Benjamin Doolittle and Michael Farrell, for example, have shown through the administering of a "questionnaire consisting of the Zung Depression Scale and the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale" that "among 122 respondents, 99 (81%) reported that they consider themselves religious" -- a fact that signifies that a majority of patients who suffer from depression may respond well to spiritual ministry.

Statement of the Problem

Medications such as antidepressants and counseling sessions in therapy, which help patients who suffer from depression cope with their surroundings, have shown to have some success in helping a patient to deal with his or her disorder. This paper, however, will show how discussions concerning spirituality may also help patients who suffer from depression. Researchers have shown that there a large percentage of patients consider themselves to have some sort of spiritual orientation (Doolittle, Farrell, 2004), and M.A. Stanley (2011) has shown that "77-83% [of participants in a study] preferred including religion and/or spirituality in therapy for anxiety and depression." In fact, those who desired to incorporate religion and/or spirituality into their therapy "reported more positive religious-based coping, greater strength of religious faith, and greater collaborative and less self-directed problem-solving styles than participants who did not think it was important" (Stanley, 2011). What this shows is that religion and/or spirituality in the treatment of depression can help draw patients out of themselves and into the world around them. The goal of this research is to help provide evidence for the argument that spirituality plays an important role in the treatment of patients who suffer from depression.

There are four essential components to every human being: the physical, the emotional, the social, and the spiritual. Modern science has done much to deal with the first three; it is the final component, the spiritual, that many researchers are now concluding deserves attention (Mohr, 2006). As the first three components help supply an individual with his or her identity, the spiritual component can also be viewed in similar fashion.

New research methods and varying approaches are being employed to direct the different studies wishing to focus on spirituality's effect on patients who suffer from illness (Richards et al., 1999). While some researchers show signs of skepticism with research that indicates negative correlation between spirituality and physical improvement (McCoubrie, Davies, 2005), others observe that spirituality often gives individual patients a sense of wholeness, hope, meaning, harmony, and transcendence (O'Reilly, 2004). So despite fears that such research is somehow "unscientific" (Lindridge, 2008), studies continue to be done that show positive results from the integration of religion and/or spirituality into patients' treatment (Shafranske, Sperry, 1990).

History of the Problem

Rachel Evans (2011) lists a number of nutritional therapies for the treatment of depression, ranging from St. John's Wort to "dan zhi xiao yao, a traditional Chinese medicine." Alternative medicine has often been seen as a supplement to the treatment of depression in the past. Other treatments have included the famous lobotomy technique designed by Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his technique. Moniz simply drilled and snipped "nerve fibers running from the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain" (Lerner, 2005). And Kyziridis identifies several ways in which the ancient Greeks would approach mental illness such as depression:

"Cicero…believed that man could help with his own cure through philosophy" (p. 43). Even today there are numerous studies that still show how physicians rely on pharmaceuticals to restore balance in a patient suffering from depression: Prevention of depends upon early intervention and usually relies on the administering of an antipsychotic. "One preliminary study suggests that treatment given at the ?rst sign of personality disruption can sometimes stave off the onset of full-blown schizophrenia and restore normal mental health" (Wyatt, 2001).

John Docherty at Cornell University dismisses some researchers for using what they call a "cross-sectional analysis," indicting them for "categorizing patients with different kinds of psychiatric disorders" (Arehart-Treichel, 2001). What Docherty reveals is that identifying a patient's disorder and treating is not always as black and white as it may appear. One reason it often appears gray may be that not all of the components of the patient are being taken into consideration. Why should psychiatrists limit themselves to the physical, emotional, and social and not deal with the spiritual?