GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM SUPERIOR TRAINING COURSE in INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PERSON (year 2024) FINAL COURSE ESSAY Gabriela Osorio Villaseñor Psy. D. FIDES ET SALUS MENTIS This text has been published on April 20, 2024 by the undersigned on her personal web site www.psicoterapiacatolica.com . The text is protected by copyright law and may not be copied or reproduced (even partially, in other formats or media), nor may its authorship be appropriated. To contact the author: +393889270703 , gabrielaosorio@psicoterapiacatolica.com
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM “Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you, all things are passing, God is unchanging. Patience gains all; nothing is lacking to those who have God: God alone is sufficient. Let your desire be to see God, your fear, to lose Him, your sorrow, not to possess Him, your joy be that which can lead you to Him and you will live in great peace." Saint Teresa of Avila
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM Index Mental health in "free fall"............................................................................................................................ 1 Drugs and psychotherapy .......................................................................................................................... 3 Which psychologist? Which psychotherapist? ......................................................................................... 4 Conventional psychotherapy: high cost, long duration and atheism ........................................:…….......... 5 Catholic Psychotherapy ............................................................................................................................... 7 The benefits of Catholic Psychotherapy ...................................................................................................... 9 Our greatest enemy .................................................................................................................................... 11 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................... 13 Web sites .................................................................................................................................................... 14 This text has been published on April 20, 2024 by the undersigned on her personal website www.psicoterapiacatolica.com . The text is protected by copyright law and may not be copied or reproduced (even partially, in other formats or media), nor may its authorship be appropriated. To contact the author: +393889270703 , gabrielaosorio@yahoo.com , gabrielaosorio@psicoterapiacatolica.com
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 1 Mental health "in free fall" Mental health is one of the most in vogue issues of the moment, increasingly central to public debate and subject of growing attention by policymakers as well. Considered in the past as a secondary and marginal issue (at least in Europe), often underestimated, a source of great prejudice and social stigma, today it has instead become a pivotal point in the various global health programs. The reason why is quickly said: psychological difficulties and psychiatric disorders have literally exploded. The causes of this are well known: in recent years the world's population has been continuously exposed to economic crises, social and political instability, wars and threats of future wars, pandemics and natural disasters, not to mention the climate emergency that now monopolizes all the news... in short, a constant "psychological terrorism" by the mass media, which is accompanied by a progressive and inexorable loss of values in a society where disillusionment, nihilism, hedonism and individualism now dominate. Globalization and the mass migrations caused by wars and widespread poverty have also uprooted many people from their natural environment, displacing them from their family and culture. Many thus abandon real life, anesthetizing themselves and taking refuge in the deceptive virtual world, a problem that affects as is well known, especially the younger generation. The advent of social media in 1997 and the uncontrolled use of electronic devices, has produced a drastic increase in mental illnesses, such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, concentration difficulties, dropping out of school and sports, etc... The suicide rate in young people, which has been more or less constant throughout history, has increased exponentially in the digital age, as can be well seen in the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma." We psychologists are increasingly confronted with new issues related to "nomophobia" and social-media addiction, social isolation such as Hikikomori. In particular, the triggering event that devastated the already shaky psyche of all humanity was the 2020 health emergency, an absolutely traumatic and deeply divisive global event, as a result of which there was an alarming increase in mental illness in people of all ages, from children around 4 years old to the elderly over 80. Particularly affected have been adolescents, who have paid the greatest consequences while paradoxically constituting the category least (indeed not at all) subject to the risk of the disease: they have had isolation, confinement, and distance learning imposed on them; they have been deprived of sports and social relations, in a climate of hatred and "witch-hunting" that has also made them feel responsible for the life and death of their grandparents. And so they spent months in depression from which many never recovered, locked in four walls in front of a desktop screen or a small liquid crystal display. No event however serious it may have been in human history, no war, famine or natural disaster, has split society, the community, the state and even the family itself in two like the Covid because propaganda has imposed a radical polarization of thought by appealing to the individual's innermost fears.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 2 The psychological torture to which we have been subjected h24 for a good 3 years by newspapers and television has triggered collective panic and massive phenomena of total cognitive dissonance. The restrictions imposed on movement and socialization, outdoor sports practice and freedom (both fundamental to mental health), the horrible (and useless) lockdown, the even more horrible, useless and unconstitutional vaccination blackmail in order to live and work, the nullification of free thought and the imposition of a single thought to which to conform, as well as the now undeniable explosion of even more serious post-vax adverse effects such as heart disease, neurological and oncological illnesses, have only made an already worrisome condition considerably worse. Disorders that were latent have exploded, and already existing diseases have drastically worsened. Dévora Kestel, director of WHO's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, says, "Nearly one billion people suffered from a diagnosable mental disorder before 2020 [...] With the pandemic, depression and anxiety are estimated to have increased by 25-27 percent. Treatment and care remain scarce, inadequate, inaccessible, or too expensive, and widespread stigma discourages people from seeking help. It is estimated that one in four people worldwide suffers from a psychological disorder, with treatment deficits as high as 90 percent in some countries. Making matters worse are stigma and misunderstanding, which prevent sufferers from identifying their own and others' psychological disorders and seeking help."1 . People thus found themselves suddenly faced with illnesses far worse than Covid itself: eating disorders, anxiety, depression and psychosis, addictions to alcohol, tobacco, drugs, electronic devices and pornography, phobias and paranoia... Thus, for many individuals and their families soon began a painful journey, a Way of the Cross often without results, between psychiatric facilities, visits with more or less trained psychologists, psychiatrists, mental coaches, yoga sessions, meditation classes and more, in the desperate search to regain serenity, joy of life and the strength to face a new day.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 3 Medication and psychotherapy This "mental pandemic" has inevitably led in all Western countries to an increase in the use of psychotropic drugs such as anxiolytics, antidepressants, sedatives and antipsychotics, use that very often has degenerated into abuse2 . In Italy, for example, the two central regions Marche and Umbria saw an increase in the use of anxiolytics by 68 and 73 percent, respectively .3 But in reality, there is no need of "peer reviewed" scientific studies to attest to what is obvious and in plain sight. Any pharmacist can, confirm that since 2020 the best-selling products are precisely psychotropic drugs, and never before they have been so easily prescribed. We know very well that psychiatry, and in general all official medicine, have a mechanistic view of the human body, has a general tendency to reject natural, holistic and spiritual therapies, also and above all because of an increasingly less credible scientific research since it is totally in the hands of Big Pharma multinationals, therefore no longer independent but in enormous conflict of interest, which imposes a very drug-dependent "ideological" approach on physicians. The idea that it is possible to heal suffering with a simple pill has thus been consolidated: these drugs are also prescribed to children, despite the fact that there are no studies showing their effectiveness and worse, the long-term effects in their cognitive development. The most emblematic case probably involves eating disorders, which have increased exponentially since Covid, with the average age of symptom onset having dropped dramatically: personal experience, it is not uncommon to see little girls with anorexia nervosa as young as 9-11 years old in the hospital with nose-gastric tubes for force-feeding. These kids who are not even adolescents are treated with benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, antidepressants for months and sometimes years, without any scientific study having any credibility to attest in the long run the validity of such a dangerous approach: these drugs are prescribed simply because, when faced with objectively really complex and dramatic situations, doctors do not know what else to do. Drug therapy (which, it should be remembered, treats the symptom and almost never goes to the cause of the problem), should always follow the logic of the "minimum effective dose" for the shortest possible time, help in the peak phase of the disease (where in many cases drugs are useful and often indispensable) and be meticulously controlled with the aim of arriving at total elimination of the drug in the shortest possible time once the psychopathological condition is stabilized. Taking psychotropic drugs should always be accompanied by a therapeutic process with psychological specialists: the problem is that drugs almost always heavily interfere with therapy, since the patient is slowed down in brain function and is often incapable of the most mundane reasoning. This simple consideration should lead psychiatrists to prescribe drugs only in truly essential cases, always referring less severe patients to a "good psychologist."
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 4 Which psychologist? Which psychotherapy? Yeah, but which psychologist? More importantly, which psychotherapy to adopt to achieve good results in a reasonable time? In fact, just as there are different branches of medicine, so there are different streams of thought in psychology, each of which may be more or less suitable for addressing a given issue. The American Psychological Association highlights five most relevant therapeutic approaches: classical Freudian psychoanalysis from which psychodynamic theory originates, behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, humanistic therapy, and finally integrative therapy (also called holistic because it involves different methodologies, with treatment tailored to each client's needs) . 4 Yet it is well known experience that the vast majority of patients and sometimes even the physicians themselves, do not know about the different therapeutic approaches that are offered; usually people turn to a psychologist (psychology graduate) or a psychotherapist (medical or psychology graduate with subsequent post graduate studies) without knowing the difference between one and the other, most often advised by some friend who has "felt good" with a particular professional rather than another. Then again, simply talking about one's issues will already be a form of relief . However, they are hardly familiar with the therapist's training and methodological approach; sometimes the professionals approached do not even have a university education, as in the case of mental coaches, family constellators, specialists in reiki, yoga, NLP, etc., all practices, it should be specified, that are not recommended by the Catholic Church as they derive from New Age philosophy.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 5 Conventional psychotherapy: high cost, long duration and atheism Beyond each case differences and specificities, the more or less valid indications to individual cases, all these approaches have three negative characteristics in common: high cost, long duration, and atheism. While in fact people have more or less free access (in Europe) to medical care through the various national health care systems (although dastardly neoliberal tendencies at work are tending to conform the European model to that of North America), mental health care is more often than not private and very expensive, thus accessible to few, with the result that distress, which is stronger in the working-class strata because of the difficult socioeconomic context, is often less well cared where it should be more widespread. There are famous Italian psychologists who charge 180 euros for not even a half-hour visit. The price obviously depends on the experience, expertise, and many years of study as well as the high demand for the professional's services (high demand and limited supply inevitably generate high prices), but this does not detract from the fact that such therapy may be accessible only to the lucky few. The vocation of helping people could therefore easily be overshadowed by purely economic interests. Generally then, the activation of one's internal resources for change, removal or acceptance of trauma aimed at gaining emotional stability, takes a long time with conventional techniques: the overall cost of therapy in the long run (cost of a single session times the number of sessions) thus soars. I often hear patients complaining that they have been in the psychologist's care for years with poor results. Instead, psychotherapy should be brief and essential: if the practitioner fails to make an impact in a reasonably limited number of sessions, then he or she should be changed because he or she has probably not found (and will never find) the right key to the problem. As for atheism, it is practically a given that a patient is unlikely ever to interact with a psychologist who proposes the Catholic faith, the root of our Western culture, as one of the pillars of his or her therapeutic approach, and works not only on the origin of trauma, self-discovery, self-potential and the search for change (a key concept in psychology), cognitive and behavioral patterns, but also on the spiritual, transcendent and eternal part of the person. This atheism has several causes, first and foremost the claim of perfect and absolute scientificity of psychology, which in fact is anything but an "exact" science as, for example, mathematics or physics are. And even if it were, science and faith are not necessarily incompatible, because for a great many scientists it is precisely the former that leads to the existence of God. Wilhelm Wundt, universally known as the father of psychology, introduced the experimental method into that discipline in the second half of the 19th century, paving the way for a scientific understanding of mental processes. But while the use of the experimental method gives the discipline a rigorous methodology of inquiry, distinguishing it from socalled "naive psychology," it never gives it the right and the presumption to call itself an exact science.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 6 And then there is he, the most famous psychologist on the planet whom everyone in the world knows, no matter how layman he may be of the subject: he is the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, who was an avowed atheist, so much so that he openly told his colleague Renè Laforgue that religion, and the Catholic Church in particular, was his greatest enemy. Psychology has developed over the years, however, without ever acknowledging the two true fathers of the discipline, namely Aristotle (4th century B.C.) and St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century A.D.). Indeed, in science, in the world and even in the Church itself there is a general trend toward a progressive modernism that increasingly disavows and rejects tradition. Aristotle, in his work "On the Soul," focuses on its definition, analyzes its nature and describes its functioning; Aristotelian "psycho-philosophy" would later be perfected by the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, the first real author of a psychotherapy manual, namely the second part of his "Summa Theologica," in which he states that man is the substantial unity of soul and body, that is, "an embodied spirit" (as Father Ramòn Lucas Lucas writes). In its early days, therefore, psychology began as the "science of the soul." After all, etymologically the terms psychology and psychotherapy are derived from the Greek terms psyché (ψυχή) meaning spirit, breath, soul, and not "physical mind" or "capacity for certain brain functions" as is often believed. Let us, therefore, reappropriate our origins without disowning tradition: we are not only therapists and scholars of the mind, but also.... drum roll... doctors of the soul! Unfortunately, instead, almost all psychologists today are avowed atheists, or if they are not, they do not integrate their faith into their professional practice, whether out of fear, fear of lack of professionalism, or because in today's post-Christian society declaring oneself Catholic has almost become something to be ashamed of, especially among health professionals. Many Italian psychologists even believe (erroneously) that declaring themselves believers constitutes a violation of the code of ethics, which in Article 4 (Principle of respect and secularism) says "[...] Recognize individual, gender and cultural differences, promote inclusiveness, respect opinions and beliefs and refrain from imposing their own system of values." But "imposing one's own system of values," means anything but hiding, or worse yet, denying one's own religious thought, or avoiding proposing (a decidedly different verb from imposing...) with politeness, politeness, absolute respect and tolerance of diversity of thought, a Catholic "reading" to the various issues that gradually arise. "Imposing one's own value system" does not even mean declaring oneself an atheist and denying the spiritual and transcendent component of man, limiting oneself exclusively to standard approaches or techniques well known in the literature.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 7 Catholic psychotherapy In my personal and work experience, I came across so many professionals from different therapeutic schools. In many of them it was evident that there was little professional vocation and a purely economic interest in their visits; almost all of them also maintained that faith should not interfere in the least with their professional practice. John Paul II would surely disagree...in his encyclical Fides et Ratio he wrote, "Faith and reason are like the two wings by which the human spirit rises toward the contemplation of truth." I, Gabriela Osorio on the other hand, partly as a result of rather traumatic family events that have profoundly changed me, felt very strongly within me the need to unite my profession and my thinking, integrating my true and non-negotiable Catholic faith into my psychotherapy techniques. The adventure began with the birth of my website www.psicoterapiacatolica.com (one t, not a mistake as I am a family psychotherapist in Mexico), later discovering that there are many psychologists and associations all over the world who follow this line and help patients with their own "scientifically inaccurate" psychological tools. In my very humble opinion, the starting point of any form of psychological therapy should be a phrase from St. Augustine found in his magnum opus "The Confessions": "You made us for yourself O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Man possesses an inherent desire for goodness and happiness, which can never be fully satisfied without God. We Catholic psychologists cannot think of limiting our intervention exclusively to techniques for the exploration of the unconscious (Freud) and defense mechanisms (Anna Freud), analysis of attachment type (Bowlby), modification of thoughts to change emotions (Albert Ellis), search for stimuli to induce or condition desired behaviors (John Watson and other behaviorists), existential analysis (Viktor Frankl), or various problem solving or motivation techniques. Nor can we think that the main and ultimate goal of our work is mere personal gain (from our point of view), and only the self-realization of the person, the fulfillment of one's goals and dreams as Abraham Maslow stated in his famous pyramid of needs (from the patient's point of view). Of course, that too-but not only that! Any form of therapy that seeks mental well-being and happiness for patients cannot be in conflict with either man's ultimate purpose, that is, his Eternal Life, or with the Divine Design that our "Chief" has designed for us. The Catholic psychologist should help people discover not only "who I am" or "how I want to be," but more importantly "who I am called to be," a much deeper and more complex question that is answered only in the discovery of one's vocation, seen as a Divine call.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 8 This does not mean, of course, that therapeutic sessions should turn into catechesis, but it would be a serious omission not to propose to people (I repeat, propose, not impose as written instead in the code of ethics) Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary as the perfect models of what is known in Freudian psychoanalysis as the "ego ideal." And at this point a question arises: beyond one's own thinking, what benefits are gained by integrating Catholicism into psychotherapy practice? Why do it? What are the benefits for both patient and therapist? Is an unbiased cost-benefit analysis possible for such a topic?
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 9 The benefits of Catholic psychotherapy Faith is undoubtedly a great ally in people's emotional stability, giving transcendent and loving meaning to human existence, moral integrity and righteousness, strength in the face of life's painful experiences, and hope of the endless joy of heaven. Ours is a post-Christian society in which new forms of idolatry such as power, pleasure, physical beauty and appearance, possession and consumption, have totally replaced God and the sacraments. The trend away from religious practices is undeniable...the disastrous results, however, in terms of mental health are there for all to see. Yet making a mere utilitarian argument, having faith benefits everyone. There are several scientific studies showing irrefutable benefits in people who believe in God. Those who are religious live healthier lives, free of excesses and perversions that inevitably lead to sin and unhappiness; they open themselves to their neighbors with love, hope and optimism, gratitude and compassion; they tend to surround themselves with strong people and social relationships in a more communal setting (e.g., parish); they engage in volunteer work that generates cascading benefits (especially in the giver). Most importantly, they are more inclined to forgiveness, by far the most healing and "revolutionary" (though difficult) practice there is. Believers intensely love man and creation, and they know they are immensely loved because their God died on the cross for them. It has been proven in PNEI (the science of Psycho Neuro Endocrine Immunology) that people who strongly believe in God have a stronger immune system because they develop norepinephrine and endorphins, get sick less, live better and longer: a rigorous Ohio University study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science5 showed, for example, that believers live an average of 5-6 years longer than atheists. Terminal patients also benefit from faith and strong introspective practices, as Dr. Simonton's Psychooncology has also well demonstrated. Man is not a machine as official medicine still mistakenly believes, but an "embodied spirit," and it is absurd to think that emotions, faith in God and mental attitudes (positive or negative) do not influence the physical body, in the occurrence and remission of illnesses; it is absurd to think that mental problems do not inevitably reverberate into physical problems and vice versa. Rates of suicide, depression and anxiety decrease dramatically in believers and are instead well spread among atheists. While experiencing emotions (such as sadness and fear) intensely, believers are not slaves to them. A true believer is unlikely ever to be depressed because they have a great mission to fulfill that gives their life (seen as the antechamber to heaven) a higher, transcendent purpose. They are also in general more accustomed to sacrifice and commitment, tempered by practices such as fasting, praying the rosary, novenas, sacramental life, strenuous pilgrimages and consecrations (such as St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort's to Jesus for Mary), which fortify the body, spirit and will.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 10 And at this point the question that comes up is-are all religions the same for living better and more? Is it the same to believe in Buddhah, Muhammad, Vishnu or Yavhè? Absolutely not! Without going into the complex discourse of the historical truths of the various religions, the miracles and lives of Catholic saints, demonic manifestations, possessions and deliverances from evil through exorcisms, acheropite images such as the Holy Shroud and the Tilma of Guadalupe, without considering so many other arguments that give extreme rationality (even scientific rationality) to our Catholic faith, we can limit ourselves to two very simple considerations. POINT 1: Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only God who gave his life for each one of us, dying crucified in excruciating suffering. He is the only one therefore who has credibility, the only one who did not remain in the "little cloud" but became flesh to point us common, stupid mortals to the truth. POINT 2: Catholicism is the only religion that gives positive meaning to the experience of pain. It is the cross that opens the door to Heaven for us. For Hinduism, pain is part of a "retribution," a karma to be paid, a purification to reach Nirvana. For Buddhists it is inevitable and inescapable, the result of an attachment to the earthly world that prevents one from reaching full "enlightenment of consciousness." For Muslims and Jews, pain is a form of spiritual growth, sometimes a divine punishment, however, unlike Catholics it has no redemptive value. Instead, for the Catholic faith, (physical) pain and (spiritual) suffering are forms of active co-participation in God's saving plan. "Therefore I rejoice in the sufferings I endure for you and complete in my flesh what is lacking in Christ's afflictions," is written in Paul's letter to the Colossians. In essence, "by changing the form of seeing things, things change in form," as the famous American writer Wayne Dyer said. Following this line of logic, we Catholic psychologists can lead our patients to change the form of seeing pain, suffering and the inevitable difficulties of life by giving the whole a higher sense of transcendence and sharing in the sufferings on the cross of Jesus. Conventional psychotherapy, on the other hand, shows a general tendency to victimize the patient, who is often justified because of past traumas or a conflictual relationship with one's parents, and then oriented only to personal self-realization and the total rejection of suffering, which is contrary to what Jesus Christ proposed in the gospel of Matthew 16:24-25: "If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever has lost his life for my sake will find it." In conclusion, there are indeed many benefits of integrating faith into psychotherapy. One last one that can be mentioned, not so much for the therapist as for the patient, is economic. It is not because psychologists with such an approach are less professional and should cost less than others, we would miss it ... but a mental health professional who calls himself a Catholic, and works not only for mere profit but also for the "salus animarum," has a moral duty to come to the aid, always of course within the limits of what is possible, of people in economic difficulty, for example by lowering or ratcheting down his or her fees. God will hold us accountable for our actions as "doctors of the soul"... What's more, Catholic psychotherapy has a "brief" approach, because the activation of internal resources for change, with help from faith undoubtedly takes place in a tighter time frame, and also in solitude.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 11 Our great enemy Sin (a conscious and voluntary act, which can be venial or mortal) is undoubtedly a primary source and cause of considerable suffering: think, for example, of families that break up over uncontrolled sexual urges that lead to physical betrayal between husband and wife in a marriage. Sin can have terrible consequences, not only on a spiritual level, because it damages not only our relationship with God, but also with ourselves, others and society. It makes us enslaved and vicious, diverting our divine intellect from the truth and preventing us from gaining freedom through the virtues. Losing Sanctifying Grace means losing relationship with God and not receiving His strength. Those who live in a state of Grace already have many fewer reasons for suffering. There are so many divine instruments that we Catholics have and help us face the difficult challenges of life and improve our mental stability: first and foremost, the 7 sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony), instituted directly by Christ, direct instruments of grace, healing and salvation. However, we have a great enemy who wants our earthly despair and unhappiness, as well as the perdition of our soul. he (with letter "elle" deliberately lowercase even though we are at the beginning of the sentence after a period...) is not a creation of fairy tales; he is a spiritual being endowed with a great but treacherous intelligence. To deny his existence is not to be immune from his attacks; indeed, this is precisely his greatest victory. The devil acts in 2 ways. 1. In the ordinary way through temptations and our thoughts; he cannot enter thoughts by causing them internally, because the use of intellectual power is subject and subservient to the will; the devil incites us to think and desire evil through the arousal of the passions, digging into our deepest Freudian Es to induce us to sin. 2. Extraordinarily (always under divine permission because he is still a mere "creature" of the One Creator), manifesting in possessions, obsessive compulsive disorders, psychosis, vexations and infestations. Many (but by no means all!) of the listed manifestations can easily be reduced to mere mental disorders, treated pharmacologically at home or in psychiatric hospitals. But there are objectively unexplained and well-documented cases, with dozens and dozens of incredulous, stunned, frightened, shocked witnesses. I had the opportunity in the writing of this text to speak with an exorcist priest, who confided in me that he, when faced with an alleged demonic possession, always contacts a psychiatrist; the opposite, however, has never happened.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 12 In all his years of experience, there was never a single physician who approached him for professional advice or help. He could have solved many desperate cases, cases that were instead condemned "lifelong" to a pharmacological approach, expensive for the state and useless in the long run for the patient. In a society that is becoming more and more atheistic every day, this evil reality is certainly overlooked. Without lapsing into forms of religious fanaticism by becoming terrified of hell and succumbing to guilt and anguish, without falling into the "medieval" extremism of seeing Satan's action behind everything, it cannot, however, be denied that the devil acts through our minds leading us toward evil, and that many psychiatric cases unexplained by official medicine would have a better chance of resolution through therapeutic sessions before the Blessed Sacrament instead of several benzodiazepine pills.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 13 Conclusions In conclusion, people who have an authentic faith in Jesus Christ do not need the psychologist, or at any rate they need it much less: they find before the tabernacle the answers for life's existential crises, and the inner strength to face the greatest adversities; they have a different "forma mentis" because in the face of events that most would brand as "negative," they instead see in it a message of love and hope, an opportunity for change, improvement and sacrifice for God's infinite love. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And we Catholic psychologists have the duty to propose (not impose!) the simplest, direct as well as cheap as totally free solution to the problems of daily existence. Never again almost 200 euros for an often useless session, but a simple visit to the Blessed Sacrament, a "disorienting" dialogue with Him, a tear and an infinite emotion, with the heart bursting with peace and love before the greatest mystery of human existence.
GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 14 Sitography [1] The State of Mental Health Globally in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Progress on the WHO Special Initiative for Mental Health (2019-2023). https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/state-mental-health-globally-wake-covid-19-pandemic-and-progresswho-special-initiative [2] Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychotropic drug consumption. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9797694/ [3] https://www.aifa.gov.it/-/monitoraggio-sull-uso-dei-farmaci-durante-l-epidemia-covid-19-rilascioanalisi-per-regione-e-aggiornamento-comprensivo-dei-primi-due-mesi-del-2021-# [4] Different approaches to psychotherapy https://www.apa.org/topics/psychotherapy/approaches [5] Does Religion Stave Off the Grave? Religious Affiliation in One's Obituary and Longevity. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550618779820?inline-read-more=
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTczNjg=