Every healing tradition placed the practitioner in a role wider than treatment: someone you could tell the truth to. That role has largely disappeared from modern medicine, and something is missing because of it.
The Babylonian ashipu, the Greek temple priest, the village vaidya, the hakim, the parish priest and the African healer all combined practical care with counsel about how a life was being lived. In the Indian tradition, illness is not separated from conduct: the sixth element of this site is that idea.
A good deal, when the claims are stated carefully.
Where the term means examining your conduct, making amends where you can, setting down resentment and living more carefully — that is old, sound, and good for you.
Where it means paying someone to remove a curse, clear past-life debts or resolve planetary afflictions for a fee, it is exploitation, and it targets people at their most frightened. In the first sense, no one can do this work for you. In the second, no one can do it at all.
Spiritual counsel is not treatment for mental illness. Depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar illness and psychosis are medical conditions with effective treatments. Prayer and reflection can sit alongside that treatment and often help. They are not a substitute, and telling someone that enough faith would cure them adds guilt to suffering.
If you are struggling, please speak to a doctor or a mental health professional. In India, the Tele MANAS helpline on 14416 is free and available at any hour.
This site is a personal account and a record of traditional practice, shared for information. It is not medical advice, not a diagnosis, and not a treatment for any disease. I am not a doctor.
If you are unwell — and especially if you have a serious illness such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease — please stay under the care of a qualified physician. Nothing here should replace or delay that care.