Let's Write about our human spiritual minds improving mental health

 Connections Between Spirituality and Mental Health

Echo essay by Arianna Huffington published in TIME
Today, there are between 10,000 and 20,000 mental health apps.

In the U.S. alone, there are 1.2 million mental health providers. 

And Mental Health Awareness Month began 75 years ago. 

It’s safe to say, we’ve never been more aware of mental health. And yet, some fear that as awareness of mental health has gone up, the state of our mental health has gone down.

A 2023, study found that one out of every two people in the world will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime. The situation with young people is even worse. “The youth mental health crisis is very real,” Dr. Harold Koplewicz, founding President and Medical Director of the Child Mind Institute, tells me. “The most common disorders of childhood and adolescence are not infectious diseases but mental health disorders. Every 30 seconds a child or adolescent with suicidal ideation or an attempt comes to an ER.”

These are particularly challenging times: Natural disasters are intensifying, chronic diseases continue to climb, and AI (artificial intelligence) is driving fear and anxiety about all aspects of life. 

People are afraid they will lose their jobs to AI, that their kids will be negatively impacted by AI, and that AI’s constantly accelerating development will evolve beyond human control.

But beyond the circumstances of the times we’re living in lies a more complicated existential crisis.

As the French priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin once said, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” When we give up on the spiritual part of human nature, we also give up on a supportive framework which can help us handle the anxieties of this historic moment of disruption.

Many answer this need for spirituality through organized religion, but as Columbia psychology professor Lisa Miller explains, there are many ways for people to embrace their spirituality. “The moments of intense spiritual awareness were biologically identical whether or not they were explicitly religious, physiologically the same whether the experience occurred in a house of worship or on a forest hike in the ‘cathedral of nature,’” she writes. “Every single one of us has a spiritual part of the brain that we can engage anywhere, at any time.”

The exact practices we engage in that lead to spiritual states of mystery, awe, grace, and wonder doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we don’t amputate them from our lives.

The famed psychologist Abraham Maslow placed self-actualization at the top of his hierarchy of needs—above physiological needs, safety, and belonging. 

But, in the last years of his life, he realized that self-actualization did not fully encompass what it means to be human and added “transcendence” to the top of the pyramid.

As Maslow put it, “The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.” It’s this drive for spirituality that takes us beyond self-centeredness and allows us to resist despair and meaninglessness. This ability to find meaning in our struggles has helped humans navigate times of stress, turmoil, and crisis throughout history—and it is now validated by the latest science.

“When it comes to finding ways to help people deal with issues surrounding birth and death, morality and meaning, grief and loss, it would be strange if thousands of years of religious thought didn’t have something to offer,” writes David DeSteno, author of How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion.

Spirituality can help us not just weather times of crisis but even emerge stronger than before. A 2024, study on frontline healthcare workers in Poland during the pandemic found that higher levels of spirituality were connected to positive psychological change as the result of struggling with life challenges, known as post-traumatic growth.

According to Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, the focused attention which occurs during spiritual practices like meditation and prayer can increase frontal lobe function, which governs executive control, and down-regulates the limbic system, which is linked to fear and the fight-or-flight response. “When it comes to broader aspects of health, the improvements in brain function associated with spiritual practices that lead to reduced stress and anxiety ultimately can lead to benefits in physical health as well,” Newberg says.

“The practice of religion, as opposed to its theological underpinnings, offers an impressive, time-tested array of psychological technologies that augment our biology,” writes DeSteno. “To ignore that body of knowledge is to slow the progress of science itself and limit its potential benefit to humanity.”

He describes religion first as working similar to how a vaccine works, “boosting the body’s and the mind’s resilience so that they can better confront whatever health challenges come their way.” And second, he uses the metaphor of medicine, healing the body and mind when sickness does hit. He cites a Mayo Clinic review of hundreds of studies in which a clear pattern emerged: “people who regularly took part in religious activities were objectively healthier.”

Even more evidence has been provided by Miller through her work on MRI scans. “The high-spiritual brain was healthier and more robust than the low-spiritual brain,” she writes. 

“For spiritually aware people across faith traditions, the brain appeared able to protect itself from the long-standing neurological structures of depression.”

In what Miller calls our “achieving awareness,” we’re focused on organizing our lives, thinking about what we want and how to get it. This is how we build careers and get things done. But a life solely defined by achieving is an unbalanced life. In our spiritual or “awakened awareness,” our perception expands. We see ourselves not just as individual achievers but as connected to others. We seek and experience meaning and purpose. This is really the distinction between Maslow’s self-actualization and self-transcendence.

In today’s culture, many see therapy as the only answer to the mental and emotional struggles of modern life.

As psychiatrist Dr. Samantha Boardman writes: “I am not anti-therapy. I am anti-therapy culture. I believe therapy works best when it is targeted and purposeful.” She is echoed by Dr. Richard Friedman, a psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medicine, who wrote that “excessive self-focus… can increase your anxiety, especially when it substitutes for tangible actions.” Excessive self-focus is exactly the sort of thing that can be mitigated in spiritual experiences connecting to something larger than ourselves.

The everyday behaviors Boardman cites that improve our mental well-being include practicing spirituality, spending time in nature, volunteering, and helping others.

A spiritual element, and an emphasis on helping others, have proven essential to the success of Alcoholics Anonymous. In co-founder Bill Wilson’s book, Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939, he wrote that “deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there.”

Today, many people are hungry for a sense of spirituality. While religious affiliation has been dropping for decades, the spiritual impulse hasn’t. A recent U.S. Gallup poll found that 82% consider themselves religious, spiritual, or both.

People have had valid reasons for leaving organized religion, but when we reject our innate predisposition for spirituality along with that, we deny ourselves the full, expansive possibilities of our humanity—as well as the tools to navigate the labyrinths of our lives.

To Kill a Mockingbird voted America's favorite book

http://time.com/5432881/to-kill-a-mockingbird-america-best-loved-novel/

To Kill A Mockingbird Was Voted America's Best-Loved Novel

Reported by Lynn Elber

Harper Lee in Montgomery, Ala. on Aug. 20, 2007, and the cover of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." AP photo

(LOS ANGELES) — “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a coming-of-age American classic story about racism and injustice, overpowered other books about wizards and time travelers to be voted America’s best-loved novel by readers nationwide.

The 1960 book by Harper Lee emerged as No. 1 in PBS’ “The Great American Read” survey, whose results were announced Tuesday on the show’s finale. 

Published in 1991, it focuses on the World War II –era nurse Claire Randall, who travels through time to 18th century Scotland and finds adventure and romance with the dashing Jamie Fraser

More than 4 million votes were cast in the six-month-long contest that put 100 titles to the test. Books that were published as a series counted as a single entry.

The other top-five finishers in order of votes were Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series about a time-spanning love; J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” boy wizard tales; Jane Austen’s romance “Pride and Prejudice”; and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” fantasy saga.

Turns out the contest was a “Mockingbird” runaway.

“The novel started out at No. 1 on the first day of the vote, and it never wavered,” series host Meredith Vieira said.

Joining her to sing the book’s praises was writer Aaron Sorkin, whose adaptation of “Mockingbird” starts Broadway previews next month, and cast members. Sorkin (“The West Wing,” ”The Social Network”) said reading Lee’s novel was his first brush with “astonishing writing.”

“There is soul-crushing injustice in this book that still exists,” he said. “And at the center, morality, decency and what it is to be a person strikes us.”

LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who portrays Calpurnia in the play, marveled at Lee’s achievement.

“I was most impressed that a woman wrote that way” during that era, the actress said, and that Lee was so “deeply involved on the right side of right.”

Lee’s slender, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel proved enduring enough to overcome the popularity of hefty epics adapted as blockbuster movie franchises (the Potter and Tolkien works) or for TV (“Outlander”). Even “Pride and Prejudice,” the 200-year-old inspiration for numerous TV and movie versions and with an army of “Janeites” devoted to Austen and her work, couldn’t best Lee’s novel.

Debbie Ford of Orion, Illinois, an “Outlander” fan whose love of the books was showcased on an episode of “The Great American Read,” expressed disappointment they didn’t win. But she delighted in the attention they — and the joy of reading — received.

“I believe this PBS series has reminded some of us again that reading is important, and it has exposed us to books that we may not ordinarily pick up. And that’s such a good thing!” Ford said in an email Tuesday, adding a friendly plug: “So please go read a book that you have not read before — especially if you haven’t yet discovered ‘Outlander’!”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and remains a fixture on school reading lists. 

Moreover, the 1962 screen adaptation won three Oscars, including a best-actor trophy for Gregory Peck’s portrayal of heroic Atticus Finch.

Set in the 1930s South, the book centers on attorney Finch and his young children, daughter Scout and son Jem. When Finch defends an African-American man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman, the trial and its repercussions open Scout’s eyes to the world around her, good and bad.

Lee’s second published novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” was written in the 1950s before “Mockingbird” but is essentially a sequel. After being put aside by the author, it was rediscovered and released in 2015. Lee died the next year at age 89.

Besides the TV series, “The Great American Read” initiative included a 50,000-member online book club and video content across PBS platforms, Facebook and YouTube that drew more than 5 million views.

The 100-book list voted on by readers was based on an initial survey of about 7,000 Americans, with an advisory panel of experts organizing the list. 

Books had to have been published in English but not written in the language, and one book or series per author was allowed. Bookworms could vote once daily for their favorite work.

Happiness in new words

How Learning New Words Could Make You Happier
http://time.com/5265277/learn-new-words-be-happy-translation/

By Katy Steinmetz published in TIME

Sometimes life, with the aid of an unrelenting news cycle, can feel like an exercise in parsing out the particular kind of bad we are experiencing. 

Are we anxious or depressed, lonely or stressed?

Tim Lomas, a lecturer in positive psychology at the University of East London — and a man who signs his emails “Best Wishes” — is engaged in the opposite endeavor: analyzing all the types of well-being that he can possibly find.

Specifically, Lomas is searching for psychological insights by collecting untranslatable words that describe pleasurable feelings we don’t have names for in English.

“It’s almost like each one is a window onto a new landscape,” Lomas says of words like the Dutch pretoogjes, which describes the twinkling eyes of someone engaged in benign mischief.

So far, with the help of many contributors, Lomas has amassed nearly 1,000 terms in what he calls a “positive lexicography,” and he recently published a book on the project called Translating Happiness.

It’s not very light reading; at its core, the book is an academic argument that Western-centric psychologists have much to learn by considering the ways that far-flung cultures speak and think about well-being.

But the collection itself has universal appeal: In his book, Lomas describes each word as an invitation for people to experience happy phenomena that may previously have been “unfamiliar to or hidden from them.”

There is widespread obsession with untranslatable words, as countless listicle-makers can attest. Why do we find these items so entrancing? They’re novel, for one. 

Untranslatable words can give us the sublime feeling one enjoys when briefly comprehending the size of the universe, reminding us that there are infinite perspectives to have and that there is a depth to things that we might not be comprehending.

People are fascinated with untranslatable words, in part, because they are useful.

They can provide catharsis, crystallizing a hazy sentiment the same way a good dictionary definition does. They’re also useful: How could we talk to each other about the guilty pleasure of schadenfreude without schadenfreude or the bizarre disorientation of déjà vuwithout déjà vu?

Those are the kinds of “hidden” phenomena Lomas speaks about, feelings we have experienced but couldn’t — or never thought to — name.

In his collection is the Spanish estrenar, which conjures the feeling of confidence one gets when wearing new clothes, as well as the Finnish hyppytyynytyydytys, which refers to the satisfaction one gets from sitting on a bouncy cushion or comfortable chair.

There is the Arabic tarab, which describes musically-induced ecstasy and the Creoletabanca, a word for the bittersweet feeling one has when being left by the person they love.

By having a name at the ready, we may be more capable of recognizing and reveling in the good things, trivial and grand, better than if we vaguely described the concept. Life is “just this great diffused river of sensations and stimuli.

It’s hard to pin things down,” Lomas says, “but if I have a label for it, it’s slightly easier to grab hold of a passing feeling.”

Part of this is simply about granularity (level of detail present in a set of data), and there is a good amount available in English already. There is variety among pleasure and peace and coziness and euphoria.

Lomas includes some English words in his database that get far more specific. Among them are montivagant, a word for wandering over mountains or hills, and chrysalism, defined as “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.”

But while English has a good quarter million words, it hasn’t captured everything.

Though widespread, it is only one of about 7,000 languages that humans speak, and each language is limited by its cultural context.

Learning that an activity or sensation has a name can imbue it with a new kind of worthiness, which might even make us more likely to engage in it.

Consider the Japanese ohanami, a word for the act of gathering with others to appreciate flowers.

Many words in Lomas’ database describe concepts that may be even less familiar to English-speakers, like the Sanskrit word upekṣā, which refers to the detached state of someone who witnesses things without becoming emotionally involved but also without indifference. (In Buddhism, this is an admirable thing.)

Lomas sees the words for unknown experiences as a means of showing people “new possibilities for ways of living.” Learning the words is no guarantee, he says, but it is a “first step.”

While this all might sound a bit hippie-dippie, his ideas are grounded in serious theory. Linguists have long argued about the extent to which the language we speak — determined in part by factors like geography and climate — limits the thoughts we are capable of having and actions we are capable of taking.

“No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality,” theorist Edward Sapir wrote. “The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.” At an extreme, one might argue that if you don’t know the word for a particular type of well-being, you’re not even capable of experiencing it.

Lomas doesn’t go that far. He, for one, believes dogs and babies can have experiences even though they lack words for them. But it’s easy to see how thought-limiting English can be. (Take the words man and woman: Other cultures have long had words that designate more than two genders, which makes it a lot easier to think beyond the binary.) To illustrate the power of a bigger vocabulary, Lomas presents the example of a study in which children who were taught new words to describe their emotions showed improvement in behavior and academic performance.

It’s possible that when words give us a greater ability to differentiate feelings, we become more capable of understanding and regulating them.

Untranslatable words can feel like whispered secrets from other cultures, and there is a commercial industry capitalizing on that fact.

Consider the many books that have recently come out on hygge, a Danish word that is defined in Lomas’ database as “a deep sense of place, warmth, friendship, and contentment.”

If we try to exploit untranslatable words — or if we use them carelessly — there is some danger of cultural appropriation. Lomas recommends being wary of that and acknowledging that English-speakers generally won’t understand untranslatable words on the same level as people who grew up with them. But he notes that languages exchanging words with one another is also a “natural process,” noting that some 40% of words in English are thought to be borrowed from other tongues.

Perusing the words in his collection, at the least, is a means of meditating on ways that we can feel good. It’s also nostalgic. Holding concentration while reading his book is a hard thing to do, because of the memories that these terms can trigger, ones that might not be summoned up otherwise.

When asked for one of his favorites, Lomas lists the German Fernweh, which describes a longing to travel to distant lands, a kind of homesickness for the unexplored.

Also delightful is the Danish morgenfrisk, describing the satisfaction one gets from a good night’s sleep, and the Latin otium, highlighting the joy of being in control of one’s own time.

So, the next time you feel overcome by the misery of it all, it is a list worth looking up.

“People can think of happiness as if it’s somehow frivolous, like you’re not also taking seriously the darkness and suffering in the world,” Lomas says.

“But while we recognize that suffering is there, we also do need to notice things around us that can lift us and help us and shine a light.” Like finding the mot juste.