Fr David O'Malley: God is an anti-depressant

Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash

Source: Salesian Schools UK

Mental health has popped up on the agenda of schools, apparently out of the blue. There seems to have been an increase in awareness of the health issues since COVID revealed an epidemic of anxiety and depression.

It is good to see the training opportunities for mental health first aid begin to expand. Some of these courses are free. However, I want to point out that mental health first aid is not new and despite the freshness of positive psychology and techniques for managing stress and sadness, we can find most, if not all, of that wisdom embedded in religion.

Religion has a depth of wisdom that speaks between generations often separated by thousands of years. As human beings we have always struggled with mental health and with the management of our moods from the earliest days of written history. Religion brings a perspective to that struggle that we ignore at our peril because it has roots, not just in good psychology, but also in meaning and mystery. So, let's take a brief look at some of the deep wisdom for mental health tucked away in our Judaeo Christian scriptures.

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