According to St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, "Let your spirit, seeking the God of Heaven, rule over the soul and body, the purpose of which is to arrange temporal life." In this unity is health, the norm of human existence.

According to St. Theophan the Recluse, the spiritual sphere in a person consists of: reverence and life in the fear of God, conscience, and the search for God.

"The spirit is, first of all, the ability of a person to distinguish the highest values: good and evil, truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness. If the choice in this area is made, then the spirit seeks to subordinate the soul and body to its decision. Through his spirit, man communicates with God. Without communion with God, the human spirit is unable to find a real criterion for determining the highest values, since only God, Who Himself is absolute goodness, truth and beauty, can correctly indicate the solution to man" (Orthodox Catechism).

In accordance with these spheres of personality, any illness has, first of all, a spiritual, and only then a psychophysiological nature.

The spiritual approach, and for me this is the Orthodox approach to a sick person, does not replace the medical-biological view, but enriches, complements and completes the idea of the personality.

Causes of mental illness

"The Church considers mental illness as one of the manifestations of the general sinful corruption of human nature. Distinguishing in the personal structure the spiritual, mental, and bodily levels of its organization, the Holy Fathers distinguished between diseases that developed "from nature" and ailments caused by demonic influence or resulting from passions that enslaved a person. In accordance with this distinction, it seems equally unjustified both to reduce all mental illnesses to manifestations of possession, which entails the unjustified performance of the rite of exorcism of evil spirits, and to attempt to treat any spiritual disorders exclusively by clinical methods...

Mental illness does not detract from the dignity of a person. The Church testifies that the mentally ill is also the bearer of the image of God, remaining our brother, in need of compassion and help..."

From the Foundations of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church

General information