Healing Depression Through Spirituality

The role of spirituality and religion in healing both physical and emotional illness is currently a hot topic in professional journals and the media. Some studies covering the topic have found:

• Depression, and other psychological disorders, increase in line with a decline in religious observance.
• Those with a strong spiritual or religious base are healthier both physically and mentally.
• Depression is more prevalent in those who lack spiritual practices or religious beliefs.

People with depression and anxiety (which are actually two sides of the same coin) need two things: to feel safe and to escape the narrow depressive self by connecting to a larger, more harmonious, reality. According to researchers, our brains have inbuilt mechanisms to help us do exactly that. However, in our stressful, competitive, consumerist and image-obsessed modern society, most of us have forgotten how.

But what do we mean by religion and spirituality? They are different but not exclusive concepts, according to William Hathaway PhD, of Regent University in Virginia. Religion usually involves belief in a power greater than yourself and spirituality includes connection to other people, your body, nature and the Divine. Recent research has shown that each of these experiences relates to different parts of the brain which, although separate, interact with each other.

Optimism and the God module

The first indication that we are hard-wired for religious belief came with the announcement on 31 October 1997 by neuroscientists working at the University of California in San Diego that they had found a small region in the brain which specialised in processing religious belief. This God module, as the lead researcher, Vilayanur S Ramachandran, called it, is located in the left temporal lobe just behind the forehead and also governs attention and focus. When words related to religion and faith are used, this area lights up and becomes very active.

Announcing his teams findings at the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience, Ramachandran said, We suggest there are neural circuits in the temporal lobe that may be part of the machinery of the brain that is involved in mystical experiences and God.

Since every society on earth has or has had a religious belief system of some kind, there must be benefits from having a faith in a transcendental being, whether that being is a personal god, the spirit of an ancestor or animal, a symbolic god or simply nature. There seems to be a deep-seated need to have, in the words of the old Gershwin song, someone to watch over me.

Imagine two bands of early hunter-gatherers: the Mbane and the Mbake. The Mbane have a fully developed animist religion that worships ancestors, animal spirits, the gods of the forest, mountains, streams and sky and, over all, the Earth Mother who watches over everything. The Mbane perform rituals and dances to make the rains come, stop the floods and attract the gnu (a form of antelope). The Mbake, in contrast, are led by a council of atheists. They scorn the whole idea of spirits, gods and Mother Earth. They are rationalists with a materialist bent. When the drought comes and forest fires swallow up the smaller game and devour the grasses that draw the gnu, which band will survive to become our ancestors? Almost certainly the Mbane will, because their faith gives them the optimism that, eventually, if they do the right dances and make the right offerings, the spirits will provide: the rains will come, the gnu will return.

Recent research has confirmed this link between religious belief and optimism and also the fact that pessimism is much more likely to overcome those who don’t have a deepseated faith. There is also a strong link between optimism and freedom from depression. While you can be depression-free yet not particularly optimistic, or even happy, its not possible to be at once optimistic and depressed. Anything that increases your optimism will reduce your depression, and this is exactly what intrinsic, or deeply felt, faith does. To get the most antidepressant power from your beliefs, its important to express them and seek out the company of those who share your views. Suppressing the expression of faith, as some do out of fear that friends or colleagues will disapprove, is a depressant in itself.

Escape the depressed self

Of course, if you have no religious beliefs you can’t just believe on cue. In fact, if someone imposes their belief on you, you may feel guilty for not living up to their standards and this form of control can lead to more anxiety and depression.

Luckily, the brain has other ways besides belief of allowing you to expand your consciousness beyond the limited, depressed self and be healed of depression. Scientists recently discovered a small region in the back of the brain called the posterior superior parietal lobe (PSPL). The job of this bundle of neurons (brain cells) is to constantly calculate your spatial orientation, your sense of where your body ends and the world begins. This area is normally a hive of activity.

However, during intense prayer or meditation, this region becomes a quiet oasis of inactivity. Its as if sensory information coming into the PSPL has been blocked, creating what Professor Andrew Newburg of Pennsylvania University calls a blurring of the self-other relationship. If meditators go far enough, they have a complete dissolving of the self, a sense of union, a sense of infinite spacelessness.

In his book Why God Wont Go Away, Newburg says that when this happens, the brain has no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything that the brain senses. And this perception feels utterly and unquestionably real.

This connectedness lies at the heart of spirituality. It’s also a powerful antidepressant. As an internal system, depression acts as an entity that strives to trap us within its grasp and thus ensure its own survival. If you’re depressed or anxious you replay the same internally driven thoughts, go through the same internally driven actions and behaviours and repeat the same dysfunctional relationship patterns. There is no mechanism within the self, within your consciousness, to rescue you from depression’s grasp. The PSLP is your escape pod, which allows you to blur the boundaries of the depressed self and truly connect to something outside.

Nature, pets, your body

Meditation is not the only way to free yourself from the depression trap. Functional relationships with other people are also a key to a depression-free life, as is connecting to nature, your body and even your pet. Psychologists are coming to the realisation that the further we get from nature and the more we surround ourselves with concrete, artificial light and mechanical noises, the more depressed we become. Spirituality is largely about reaffirming our link with the natural world, and the process can start in small ways that can have a profound effect, such as placing a potplant on your windowsill.

Rachael and Stephen Kaplan, both psychology professors at the University of Michigan, blame our modern depression pandemic on our separation from the natural world, beginning in infancy. Rachel cites, as a personal example that confirmed years of research, how her mood changed when she switched offices from one that looked out onto a barren courtyard to one with a view of trees, squirrels and grass. Researchers at a Swedish hospital recently found that heart surgery patients in intensive care units could reduce their anxiety and need for pain medication by looking at pictures depicting trees and water.

Just being with a dog or cat considerably reduces peoples stress level, makes challenging tasks easier and raises mood, according to a team led by Dr Karen Allen of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Awareness of the body can also have this effect. As well as offering relaxation and increased physical wellbeing, this kind of learning literally creates new connections within the brain that bypass the old programmed thoughts and feelings the depressive self.

Focusing your attention with awareness on a tree, waves on a beach, on your own body or on stroking your cat, activates the part of the brain that generates your spiritual impulses. You are able to separate from the depressed self and in doing so you are using your spirituality in ways that human evolution intended.