Dr. Dan Blazer: What Faith Communities Can Teach Psychiatrists about Depression

FOR CENTURIES, FAITH COMMUNITIES took care of the depressed. After Greek and Roman times, the depressed, if severely ill, were often housed in religious institutions such as priories or monasteries. As a result, depressive-like symptoms have long been of great interest to the Christian community. Though monasteries were cut off from Greek medicine, a knowledge of medicine was included in the general education of monastics, and many monasteries (such as Chartres) were centers of learning. Caregivers of the depressed in these institutions held the prevailing view of the humors, so they took a biological approach (such as baths for eliminating black bile). Even so, depression (melancholia) was closely associated with the moral strength of the individual, and the care was very crude.

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