On Death by Father John Romanides VIDEO

Fr. John Romanidis: Mental illness and demonic possession in Patristic tradition

The definition of mental illness from a Patristic point of view is that people are mentally ill when the noetic energy they have inside them is not functioning properly. In other words, being mentally ill means your nous is full of thoughts [logismoi], not only bad thoughts, but good thoughts as well.

In other words, according to the Church Fathers, anyone whose soul has not been purified from the passions and who has not reached the state of illumination through the grace of the Holy Spirit is mentally ill, but not in the psychiatric sense. For a psychiatrist, being mentally ill is something else. It means suffering from psychosis or being schizophrenic. For Orthodoxy, however, if you have not been purified of the passions and have not reached a state of illumination, are you normal or abnormal? That is the question.

Who is considered a normal [i.e., spiritually healthy] Orthodox Christian in the Patristic tradition? If you want to see this clearly, read the service of Holy Baptism, read the service of Holy Chrism that is held at the Patriarchate of Constantinople [and in various other patriarchates] on Holy Thursday, read the service for the consecration of Church sanctuaries. There you will see what it means to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. There you will see who is illumined.

In all of the Church services, as well as the ascetic tradition of the Church, mainly three spiritual states are mentioned: (1) the state in which the soul and body have beenpurified from the passions, (2) the state in which the human nous has been illuminedby the grace of the Holy Spirit, and (3) the state in which the human soul and body experience theosis [deification, glorification]. For the most part, however, they speak about purification and illumination [the first two stages], since the Church services are expressions of reasonable [rational, logiki] worship.

So who is the normal Orthodox Christian? Can someone who has been baptized but not purified be considered normal? What about someone who has not yet been illumined? Or is it someone who has been purified and illumined? Naturally someone in the last category is a normal Orthodox Christian. [In other words, the only non-mentally ill, normal, healthy Orthodox Christians are those who have attained purification (purity of heart) and illumination by the Holy Spirit.]

So what makes a normal [spiritually healthy] Orthodox Christian different from the rest of the Orthodox? Is it dogma? Of course not. [Because all Orthodox Christians share the same dogma, but not all Orthodox Christians are spiritually "normal", i.e., healthy.]

Take the Orthodox in general. They all share the same dogma, the same tradition, the same common worship. A church sanctuary, for example, might hold three hundred Orthodox Christians. Of that number, however, only five are in a state of illumination, while the rest of them are not. The rest of them have not even the slightest idea what purification is. So this raises the question: How many among them are normal Orthodox Christians? Unfortunately, out of three hundred, only five are.

All the same, purification and illumination are specific conditions of healing that experienced and illumined spiritual fathers can recognize. So we have here clearlymedical criteria [spiritual illness or health]. Or maybe you are not convinced that these criteria are strictly medical? Consider the fact that the nous is a physiological human organ that everyone has. It is not only Orthodox that have a nous. So do Muslims, Buddhists, and everyone else. So all human beings have the same need for purification and illumination. And there is only one therapeutic treatment.

Or do you think that there are many therapeutic treatments for this illness? And is it really an illness or not?

Present-day Orthodox are hard-pressed to respond to these issues, because they have become so far removed from this tradition today that they no longer think of the Orthodox Christian way of life in the context of sickness and healing. They do not consider Orthodoxy to be a curative course of treatment, even though all the prayers are perfectly clear on this point. After all Who is Christ for Orthodox Christians? Is He not repeatedly invoked in the prayers and hymns of the Church as "the Physician of our souls and bodies"?

source