🎓 Mental health and anthropological perspective

What can Christian anthropology contribute to the science of mental health? And can psychology or psychiatry alone explain the phenomena that happen within humans?

Over the years, the separation of medical science and anthropological reflection has caused societal decline and the emergence of many prejudices.

This has led to a lack of psychological analysis into the complexity and beauty of each person, which has tended to look at quantity over quality without taking into account the phenomena of what goes on inside. Workers in the industry feel obliged to separate their analytical thought from their Christian sensitivity, preventing them from understanding their patients on a deeper level.

Faced with this reality, the University has organised the first European Congress of Christian Anthropology and Mental Health (13th and 14th September), which primarily aims to encourage dialogue, reflection and interdisciplinary research between Christian anthropology and the science of mental health. It will promote the collaboration of psychologists and psychiatrists with philosophers and theologists to strengthen both disciplines.

On 13th September, the congress will welcome international speakers such as psychologist and researcher Peter Hampson of Oxford University; Professor Paul Vitz of Divine Mercy University, USA; Professor Sarah Lane of Edinburgh University; and Professor Michael S. Sherwin of Fribourg University.

There will also be international input on 14th September. Juan José Pérez-Soba Díez del Corral, Professor and Director of Studies at John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, Rome; Professor Amadeo Cencini of the Salesian and Gregorian Pontifical Universities of Rome; Werner May, President of the European Movement of Christian Anthropology, Psychology and Psychotherapy (EMCAPP); Anna Ostaszewska, Former President of the EMCAPP Association of Christian Psychologists in Poland; Andrey Lorgus, Rector of the Institute for Christian Psychology in Moscow; Professor Krzysztof Wojcieszek of the University of Social Sciences in Warsaw; Nicolene Joubert, Founder and Director of the Institute of Christian Psychology in South Africa; and Elena Strigo, Head of the ABIGAIL Psychological Counseling Centre in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

As well as those previously mentioned, psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, theologists and professors from our university and from all over Spain will be in attendance. For more information on the programme, follow this link and the instructions of the Author's Guide.