It is known from the history of medicine that the formation of healing in Russia as a special social system of care for the sick is inextricably linked with the penetration of Christianity into the life and customs of people. From the moment of the baptism of Russia, healing was under the direct protection of the Orthodox Church.

Even the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir in his Ustav declared "lechts" (doctors) to be people of the Church, subject to the bishop. At the Stoglav Council of 1551, Ivan the Terrible demanded assistance in caring for the poor and sick, which included the "devoid of reason". By the decision of the Council of the Hundred Chapters, the monasteries took upon themselves the care of the mentally ill, in particular, those who had committed crimes. Monasteries had performed these functions before, but the decrees of the Hundred Chapters Council clarified and expanded their duties.

The process of separation of psychiatry from the Church began approximately at the end of the eighteenth century. Psychiatry preferred to become more "objective", and scientists and practitioners preferred to rely only on facts, data from clinical and laboratory observations. Eminent professors could not resist the temptation to find a rational answer to everything and dot the i's.

Here is what the famous Orthodox writer Sergei Nilus writes about this in his book "The Great in the Small": "Chance, a certain confluence of circumstances, a psychic reaction, nerves, the flabbiness of an unbridled barich, atavism and many other things that explain equally little, will lead the wise men of this age to explain the psychology of the present moment. But they will not even bother to explain it: it is not the truth that is dear to them, but their pseudo-scientific point of view. To refuse it means to admit one's incompetence, and which of them has the courage to do so? In the life of the aristocracy of thought, in which they have usurped the first place for themselves, they do not care about humanity, which is perishing in the errors they have created, if only their primacy, their guiding influence over the frivolous crowd, would be preserved.

They know how to explain the sudden illness of a healthy organism by a contagious principle that is outside the organism and penetrates it from without, but the microbe of spiritual contagion – discovered long ago and known to spiritual doctors, the great men of prayer of the Church, the only spiritual healers of the restless human soul – is not given to modern false healers to rediscover. Their spiritual eyes are closed by apostasy and unbelief, and "when they see they do not see, and when they hear they do not understand."

October 1917 and the communist doctrine, the cornerstone of which is atheism, brought dramatic consequences known to the world. What happened in medicine, in psychiatry? Man was reduced to carnal reality (brain, body fluids, nerve ganglia, internal organs, reflexes, and behavioral reactions). Personality also began to be considered from a physiologically oriented point of view. The spiritual understanding of every disease was finally overthrown. And in return came the biological one.

A person began to be perceived as a "cog" in a large machine (state). In Stalin's time, researchers and doctors were very careful in pronouncing words such as soul, inner world, personality, for fear of persecution. Everything that could interfere with the party members and their power was expelled and destroyed. From childhood, people were indoctrinated that a small period of time of 6070 years was the only wealth of a person, and, accordingly, career, money, and power became the criteria of well-being.

From the inner life and the search for God, a decisive turn was made to the external life, to vices, sins and acquisitiveness. Communist philosophy, which proclaimed the growth of material well-being as the main task, came to a dead end, simultaneously crippling the fate of millions of people.

The situation in foreign psychiatry seemed to contribute to the formation of "renovationist views." In Europe, psychiatry developed on the basis of rationalistic ideas. Mental problems and illnesses began to be exclusively the competence of psychiatry. The priest and the Church Sacraments turned out to be unnecessary. Famous professors vied with each other to express their negative attitude to religion.

Here are just a few examples. Schneider: "Manifestations of religious life are mental illness"; Raine: "Religious ideas are obsessions." For Freud, religion was mass madness.

Time passed, decade after decade, and by the 1930s, psychiatrists, as well as scientists of other specialties, with rare exceptions, developed an obedient attitude towards atheism and atheism. But even in that difficult time there were real ascetics among the great medical scientists, who were able to carry a deep faith in God and Christian piety throughout their lives. These are, for example, professor psychiatrist D. E. Melekhov, surgeons S. S. Yudin and now glorified Archbishop Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), academicophthalmologist V. P. Filatov and others. Through their prayers and the prayers of all believers, the Lord preserved us.

In recent years, by the grace of God, psychiatry has again begun to talk about spirituality. For example, a prayer room was opened at the Research Institute of Clinical Psychiatry, and a church was restored on the territory of the I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy. The temple was consecrated at the V. P. Serbsky Institute. Spiritual nourishment of patients also takes place in the hospital churches of the clinics named after P. P. Kashchenko, O. V. Kerbikov, and the Scientific Center for Mental Health. Divine services are held in the hospital church in the name of the Holy Martyr Boniface in the Regional Psychiatric Hospital. Now scientific and scientific theological conferences are often held with the participation of the clergy and psychiatrists. A number of very useful meetings were devoted to this problem in the publishing department of the Moscow Patriarchate. In December 1995, the first seminar on monastic medicine was held with the invitation of psychiatrists. A pastoral seminar held at St. Daniel's Monastery in early 1997 was devoted to this topic.

In the psychotherapeutic encyclopedia, published in 1999, there is a substantial article entitled "Orthodox Psychotherapy".