Spiritual Psychiatry − Introduction and Appreciation

Abstract

In March 1994 in Lyon, France, was founded the International Association of Spiritual Psychiatry (IASP). Spiritual psychiatry is a medicine of the human psyche that fully integrates the spiritual quest of each individual who faces psychical problems, using a therapeutic approach. Each human being seeks happiness. Initially, they think they can find it in the external world (consumerism, work, power, relationships), then once they discover that they still have not found what their looking for, they revert back to the internal realm in order to understand that this sought-for happiness is already present. In the past, psychology and psychiatry had been separated from spirituality leaving the patient to choose from contradictory means. The association was established as a reaction to excessive mechanization and materialism of present day psychiatry that seems to have forgotten the essential. Currently, the IASP is made up of approximately 150 members from five continents. They are for the most part psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists and specialists in alternative medicine. The number of participants and their geographic diversity is rapidly increasing. This expansion is due to the fact that a general need exists for the public, and therapists themselves, to introduce a psycho-spiritual medicine of merit.

The IASP is based principally on Buddhist and Vedantic traditions. The purpose of this paper is to supplement spiritual psychiatry with the Christian faith.