Is depression all in our minds, or a chemical imbalance of the brain?

Catholic Insights Into Depression

by Fathers for Good

Being father to five young boys and maintaining both a university teaching post and a busy clinical practice would seem to be a prescription for physical and emotional meltdown. Yet in addition to all this, Catholic psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty found time to write a very practical and much-needed book on depression.

The Catholic Guide to Depression: How the Saints, the Sacraments, and Psychiatry Can Help You Break Its Grip and Find Happiness Again (co-authored with Father John Cihak and published by Sophia Institute Press) provides a deeply informed, insightful and well-balanced approach to a widespread and very personal problem. There is no such thing as “Catholic depression” but there is a distinctive Catholic approach to this and other mental conditions that draws upon the best of modern science and the traditional spirituality of the Church.

Dr. Kheriaty is Director of Residency Training and Medical Education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine, and is co-director of the program in Medical Ethics at the School of Medicine there. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Notre Dame and his medical degree from Georgetown University. Fathers for Good exchanged e-mails with him for this interview.

Fathers for Good: You point out that the words “psychiatry” and “psychology” are based on the Greek word for “soul” – and that the Church has centuries of wisdom in this area. Yet it seems that these medical fields are based on secular and even anti-religious foundations. What’s a Catholic to do?

Dr. Kheriaty: It’s true, according to its original Greek root, the word “psychiatrist” literally means “doctor of the soul.” But in modern psychiatry, this original meaning has largely been abandoned. Psychiatrists today tend to focus on the body – especially the brain – to the exclusion of the soul. Other critics have leveled the opposite complaint against psychiatry and psychology, claiming that we overstep our bounds and often tread on territory that was once occupied by religion. For example, the great Bishop Fulton Sheen wondered whether the psychoanalyst’s couch had replaced the priest’s confessional in the modern world.
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