Spiritism and Mental Health: Practices from Spiritist Centers and Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals in Brazil

“Soul Medicine”

Almost 40 percent of family practice physicians (Olive 1995) disclosed that they had prayed with patients, and 9 out of 10 of those believed that praying with their patients had beneficial effects on the medical problem or psychiatric problem that was being addressed.

In spite of compelling evidence to the contrary, we continue to treat symptoms as if they are caused by a “broken brain” in which deficiencies or “imbalances” of serotonin and other neurotransmitters are regarded by modern psychiatry as sufficient explanations of mental illness.

Ivan Hervé, MD (2006), reported about 181 cases he tracked for 20 years of treatment at a Spiritist Center in Porto Alegre, giving a description of their disorders and the results achieved.

Fifty Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals in Brazil

We have hunted for big simple neuro-chemical explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them. (Kenneth Kendler, Co-Editor in Chief of Psychological Medicine, quoted in Lacasse 2005)