Importance Of Mental Health Emphasised

Press, Volume C, Issue 29467, 20 March 1961, Page 16

Importance Of Mental Health Emphasised

“There is a close relation between mental health and spiritual wellbeing, and it is important that priests and ministers of religion should understand the most recent developments in psychiatry and psychology,” said the Rev. Professor E. F. O’Doherty, of University College, Dublin, in Christchurch yesterday. Professor O'Doherty is in New Zealand to meet clergymen of all denominations and professional people in the mental health field, and to inform his own Roman Catholic church on important extensions in the psychology courses of seminary students overseas.

“The church has always been interested in the best psychology of the day, and traditionally all students for the priesthood have studied psychology in the philosophical sense.” Professor O’Doherty said. “Recently, however, the courses at many seminaries have been extended to include experimental and empirical psychology as well. “Everyone dealing with any other person should understand what is conducive to the full development of the personality and what is not,” he added.

“Mental health is the concern of all those concerned with bringing up children and the development of the human personality in all its aspects. Mental health touches educationists as- well as doctors, and lawyers as well as psychiatrists, priests, and ministers of religion. All these people should know what part they can play in promoting the mental health of the people they deal with.”

Professor O’Doherty holds the chair of logic and psychology at his college, which is non-denominational by charter but, as he puts it, “is predominantly Catholic in character, as is to be expected in a country where 96 per cent, of the population is of that faith.”

All future priests in the care of the archdiocese of Dublin, many members of religious orders, and many future missionaries study philosophy and psychology at the college. Students, lay as well as religious, in the psychology department take graduate courses to a high professional level, clinical psychology being predominant.

Professor O’Doherty recently spent a month in Baltimore as visiting professor of psychology at the Seton Psychiatric Institute. While there, he ran an interdenominational seminar on pastoral counselling. In Christchurch, he will address the opening session of an interdenominational seminar on mental health, to be held fortnightly in the city from next month on. The professor has also been

nominated to take part in a seminar on student mental healh to be held in Berne in August by the World University Service. He is a member of the scientific committee of the World Federation for Mental Health, one of the organisations responsible for his nomination for the Berne appointment. On March 29. Professor O’Doherty will give a public lecture in Christchurch on “The Church and Mental Health.” Later, he will visit the other main centres. His first day in New Zealand yesterday was marred by a collision on the Summit road, in which he fortunately suffered no more than a slight injury to his nose.