Mental-health training in catholic seminaries

Abstract

Some years ago, the Director of the Religion and Mental-Health Proj ect, supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, conducted a study at Loyola University of Chicago, with the assistance of his staff. A progress report was published in the Journal of Religion and Health for January, 1962. Now that the findings of the project are being consolidated and put to final test by heads of Catholic seminaries and by other interested persons of many faiths, the Director has been asked to bring the report up to date. As readers of the Journal are no doubt aware, the project was an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the role of religion in mental health and an attempt to make better use of the behavioral sciences in the training of priests and ministers. Schools of the three major faiths worked together, with projects conducted at the Harvard Divinity School and Yeshiva University as well as at Loyola University of Chi cago. The study at Loyola, begun in 1956, was to be carried on for an in definite period by the school's psychology and theology departments. The project workers are still proceeding toward the accomplishment of their goals. Some of these goals have to do with the introduction of the team approach in the study of the relation between religion and mental health, in the clarification of the role of the minister in the preservation of mental health, and in the prevention of mental illness and maladjust ments. One of the side effects was the ensuing closer collaboration be tween religious educators and lay persons both in the screening of candi dates for the ministry and in follow-up studies of personality changes that take place during the course of seminary training. Thus a continu ing program of research into the complex and often involved relation