Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily.
Yesterday we mentioned that Dr. David Rosmarin is in charge of the Spirituality and Mental Health division at McLean Hospital, Harvard's Mental Hospital, where they are researching the impact of spirituality on mental health. They use the concept of spirituality to help with people struggling with mental illness.
What's their secret? They have something called SPIRIT Groups, where SPIRIT is an acronym for Spiritual Psychotherapy for Inpatient Residential and Intensive Treatment. These SPIRIT groups meet for 30-60 minute sessions, with a spiritual leader directing. It's not focused on any specific religion, but rather on what you’d call a higher power. I actually spent six months there, taking a clergy training course, and giving these SPIRIT workshops to Jewish inpatients. One of the topics that I developed there is based on a thought that I once heard from Rav Wolbe:
We believe that Hashem created the world. Things are not here due to evolution. There are certain specialized behaviors that creatures have, such as a spider that knows how to spin a web, a beaver that knows how to make a dam, and a bee knows how to make a honeycomb. Where do these creatures get this training from? Of course we know they don't get any training at all. We call a natural instinct, and Instinct is code for what God put into the animal ( or bird fish, or insect) kingdom for survival. Instinct is necessary for survival. How do we know when something's an instinct? Well, if all bees do this, and if all flies do that, then it's an instinct that God put into them. Human beings also do things out of instinct. How do we know if something is an instinct? If people all across the world do something, and they never had a meeting to discuss it, that means it's a human instinct. This is true not just when it comes to physical needs, but for spiritual needs as well.
If we look all around the world, we notice that people pray. They didn't all have a meeting of the minds and say, “Let's create a bunch of religions called Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity,” and so on. But they’re all doing the same thing. They're all praying, they're all involving themselves in religious behaviors. They're all having a connection with a higher power. Where did this come from?
The answer is, it's a human instinct to pray, to look up to a higher force and a higher power. And if it's a human instinct, we need it for survival. And if you don't have it, then, like any instinct that's missing, you're not going to function properly. Therefore, all human beings need this. Rav Wolbe calls this concept Frumkeit.
He says it's an instinct. Of course it's not enough just to go on your instincts. You have to use your intellect, your Da’at, and your knowledge. But man instinctively wants to turn to a higher force, even without being trained. He says, it says in Tehilim, “The lion’s roar for their food and to ask God for their sustenance.” That means even an animal knows there is a force above it, that's taking care of it. It's a human need to turn to a higher force, and it's a necessity to remain mentally healthy. But even beyond just maintaining mental health, when a person is actually mentally ill, spirituality can help.
Rav Wolbe, in an essay based on the speech he gave to psychiatrists on mental health ( page 87) says that even when a person is clinically depressed, a rabbi can help and give a lot of encouragement. And he quotes something he read many years prior, from a psychiatrist named Dr Schou, in a training for the clergy on how to help people with mental illness. Rav Wolbe writes said, Just as pills help people, so too, Pesukim can help.
Rav Wolbe mentions how Hashem tells Rachel, “Yesh Tikva/There's hope,” quotes different pesukim of hope and he says, “I tried this and I saw a tremendous influence on depressed people. I was able to break a deep depression without medicine.”
He adds that it doesn't work by just reading in a dry way. You have to put in your Emunah and Bitachon and your your feeling. This will help someone that's mentally ill, because part of cause of mental illness has to do with not feeding that instinctive need for spirituality.