Gustavo Henrique Rodrigues de Oliveira Ramalho (photo), who works in Physical Education (PE), comes from the Brazilian city of Barbacena. He now lives in Conselheiro Lafaiete, also in the state of Minas Gerais, where he volunteers at the Paz (Peace) Spiritist Group. There he is in charge of the Mediumship Department. He has a long experience with mental health issues and mediumship and provides us in this interview with valuable material for reflection. 

When and how did you become a Spiritist?

That’s a very interesting question! I must admit that I used to consider those who believed in the Spirits and the phenomena as ignorant and mystics. It all changed when I was finishing my post-graduation degree. I had a “scientific” and materialistic view of the world and I lived according to those principles. One day, however, as I came back home from a barbecue where my wife and I had drunk alcohol, she stared at the wall and began smiling. All of a sudden she went into a trance and it became evident that another intelligence was there with her. It was my father, who had passed away 15 years before. After we had a long conversation, I was left in no doubt about the immortality of souls and the capacity of Spirits to communicate with us. He advised me during that dialogue to study Spiritism (as he had done before returning to the Spirit World, without my knowledge). And that’s what I began doing the day after that, October 5th, 2008. 

Where does your interest in mental health and its links with mediumship come from?

I was always interested in mental health issues. The eruption of my wife’s mediumistic capacities, which came before we had studied and understood mediumship, led to a number of unpleasant situations. We looked for help not only at a Spiritist Centre, but also from doctors. But the medication prescribed didn’t work against spiritual attachment, or obsession. Studying the books of Allan Kardec, I understood that she was the medium and the symptoms, which were initially diagnosed as psychopathological, always happened at the same time and location. It always happened during mediumship meetings at the Spiritist Centre. It became clear to me then that not all pathogenic cases should be diagnosed as such. Spiritism has an important role to play in clarifying that. 

Tell us about the lessons we can learn from “A Loucura sob Novo Prisma,” (Madness under a New Perspective) a well-known Spiritist book that deals with that subject.

Firstly, it was a book written by Bezerra de Menezes [and published posthumously in 1920], showing that he was much more than “The Doctor of the Poor,” as he became known. He used intelligence, which is the Spirit’s main attribute, to put Spiritist science into practice to help those who could no longer find hope in the traditional medicine of the time. He explains his methodology to distinguish between “physical” and “spiritual” illnesses. And he describes cases in which patients were cured through dialogue, when their souls detached temporarily from the body and were able to speak through mediums. 

How can we distinguish the problems caused by mediumship to those linked to mental health?

As Kardec explained in The Mediums’ Book, mediumship is not the cause of madness. There are scientific papers that show exactly that, including one by Alexander Almeida and Etzel Cardena, published at Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria (The Brazilian Psychiatry Review) in May 2011. They did studies on experienced mediums and came to the conclusion that on average they get higher mental health scores than the general population. The study says there's a direct correlation between training mediumship and the control you are able to exert over it. And that’s what differentiates mediumship from mental illness. That’s where Psychiatry and Spiritism need to work together. 

And how can we understand the vast range of psychological profiles in the light of Spiritism?

André Luiz has taught us that “we are heirs of ourselves” and the skills, tendencies and behaviours we have now are the combination of all the experience we have had, as Spirits, through all our previous incarnations. The issue of psychological profiles must be understood within the context of reincarnation. Without that, the sciences that try to understand the psyche, albeit important and of great value, become restricted and restrictive. More important than anything else is that, regardless of our inclinations and beliefs, we take the leap and make a concerte effort to live in harmony with divine law. 

What does The Mediums’ Book say about this issue? 

I would like to quote Allan Kardec, who writes in item 254 of the aforementioned book: “Among those who are treated as mad there are many who are only subjugated, and whose treatment ought to be exclusively moral; but such patients are often made really mad by the physical treatment to which they are subjected. When your doctors understand spiritism, they will be able to distinguish between these two classes of madness; and they will then cure many more patients than they now do.” And in item 284, Professor Rivail adds: “Would it be possible to modify a person's waking ideas, by acting on his spirit during sleep? "Yes, in some cases; the spirit, during sleep, is not so closely bound to matter as when awake, and is therefore more accessible to moral impressions; and these impressions may influence his judgement in the waking state.” These two quotes constitute the core of my approach to work on mental health and mediumship.