Panel: MEDICINE AND THEOLOGY IN DIALOGUE: STEPS TOWARDS MORE EFFECTIVE SPIRITUAL CARE



1086.5 - DEPRESSION, THEOLOGY, AND EXISTENTIAL HEALTH

AUTHORS:
Visala A. (University of Helsinki ~ Helsinki ~ Finland)
Text:
The notion of existential health has found its way into public and official discourse on medicine and public health. In Sweden, existential health is officially recognized as one of the dimensions of public health. It includes spirituality, meaningfulness and other worldview-related domains, and it is considered a crucial aspect of resilience and a protective factor against mental illness and suicide. The World Health Organization does not recognize existential health, but it does recognize the domain of spiritual, religious, and meaningful beliefs and how these might contribute to overall health. Recently, there have been attempts to identify and conceptualize a specific kind of depression, existential depression, that is caused mainly by existential crises. This notion, however, has not been examined in the light of existential health. Might there exist a kind of depression that is caused by the fundamental breakdown of existential health? I have argued in my previous work that experiences of depression involve a "flattening out" of the valuational landscape. The depressed person can no longer experience affectively the valence of goals and objects. In this paper, I will attempt to connect my analysis of depression with the notions of existential health and existential depression. In addition, I will examine how different "theologies of depression" might function as potentially preventive frameworks for maintaining existential health.