Are we limiting our mental health toolkit? In a world focused on “symptoms and medications,” Dr. Emma Bragdon introduces a structured, community-based path to wellness: Spiritism. Founded by Allan Kardec and widely practiced in Brazil, Spiritism blends spirituality with ethical practice and study. In this conversation, we explore how it reframes certain mental health experiences, provides ethical guardrails for mediums, and reflects a growing interest in spirituality within mental health—recognized even by the American Psychiatric Association. If traditional care feels incomplete, this episode explores how integrating spirituality may support deeper healing and human potential.
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Emma Bragdon, Ph.D. On Spiritism
Dr. Emma Bragdon is the Founder and Executive Director of Integrative Mental Health University, IMHU.org. She earned her PhD in Transpersonal Psychology in 1987 and was licensed in California as a marriage, family, and child therapist in 1988. As a pioneer who has helped define the field of spiritual emergency, Emma has published seven books and co-produced two documentary films.
Within IMHU, Emma has trained over 130 spiritual emergence coaches who are available to support individuals disoriented or in distress as they open spiritually. She also leads a small group of health care providers to Brazil once a year to learn about the Spiritist paradigm of mental health care from Spiritist practitioners. Emma maintains a private practice consulting internationally via Zoom.
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Dr. Bragdon, thank you so much for joining us again. It’s delightful to see you.
Thank you. I’m delighted to be here. It’s an honor to be interviewed by you again.
Thank you. I’ll direct people to our first interview for an intro, an overview of who you are and what you do, and particularly, things like Spiritism and Mental Health, the book by you that I was reading that was so informative. It opened my eyes to the possibilities that the Spiritism movement might make available to us who have a more limited Western world.
It’s just, “Here’s a list of symptoms. Here’s a list of medications. You cross-match them, and then there’s your mental health,” which is an approach that I’ve never found works well, but it’s the one we’re saddled with here in the West. If you would, give us a little intro overview to what Spiritism is, how it’s different than spirituality, and how it opens possibilities for mental health support.
Defining Spiritism Vs. Spirituality
To begin with, spirituality is a large, general, and generous term. It’s having to do with our relationship, if we have one to the spiritual world. A lot of people will want to correct me like, “You’re meaning spiritualism, right, Emma?” I’m not. I mean a different word. It is a different word. The term Spiritism was coined back in the 1850s or 1860s, when Allan Kardec was writing the foundational books for Spiritism.
Spirituality, to begin with, is a broad and generous term that relates to our connection to the spiritual world. Spiritism, however, is a different concept. Share on XOrigins Of Spiritism & Kardec’s Method
He was very well known in Paris at the time as someone who was doing adult education, oftentimes what we would call evening courses and things like that. He was exacting as a researcher and as someone who wanted to educate people in an accurate way. He was drawn to what was, at that time, fashionable in Paris. What had come to Paris from the United States were séances. That means people would get together. They put their hands on a table and were somewhat connected, maybe hand to hand or not, but they would be trying to communicate with the spirits.
As Kardec wrote about it, he thought in the beginning, “This is just fashion. There’s not much to it, but I’ll go take a look because it’s part of what life is like in Paris in the 1850s.” He went. As a result of his going there, he became very interested in channeling. Some of the people who were professed as excellent mediums could channel information from more intelligent spirits, meaning more evolved. In other words, they had inspiring messages for humanity so that humanity could live in a way that created more happiness and satisfaction.
Kardec was not only inspired a little bit, but he started giving his life over to interviewing a whole series of mediums. Since he was such a systematic thinker, he thought, “I’ll have this list of questions. I’ll give these questions to a bunch of very highly regarded mediums. I’ll collate the answers.” Think 1,000 mediums. “The answers that come through that are similar from these highly regarded mediums, I will write as answers to the questions. I’ll also write down who the personage was.” In other words, a dead person on the other side who was professing to give the answers to these questions.
These are questions like, why are we here on earth? What’s the purpose of this life? What can human beings learn about life on earth? What happens at death? What’s the interaction between spirits and human beings? Is there a negative interaction? What’s the nature of that interaction? If we want to have the most positive interaction, how do we do it? There are lots of questions and answers in his foundational books.
The way Spiritism came to Brazil is that wealthy Brazilians sent their children of university age to the Sorbonne or to Paris to get their university education. These young people were aware of what was fashionable and interesting in Paris and brought Kardec’s books that were being sold hot off the press, as it were. The Brazilian young people brought them back to Brazil. It took root in fertile ground in Brazil.
That was in the late 1800s?
Spiritism’s Integration In Brazil
Correct. We’re talking about the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, and on. Brazil was fertile ground to take in what was being written about because there was a large slave population that had come over to Brazil that had been integrated into the culture. In other words, there was a lot of intermarriage with the people who were Brazilians. We won’t just call them white people because there are a lot of indigenous people also who have a Spiritualist background. They believe in the meaningful dialogue between those who were in the spirit realm and those who were in the body.
The indigenous people, the people who would come to Brazil through slavery, and the people who had colonized Brazil or grown up in Brazil, there was a great deal of intermarriage and a great foundation for spiritualism, which means this dialogue with the spirits. When something came from Paris that was considered very fashionable, and it was systematic and clearly cut by this academic, Kardec, it took off. The ground was ready for this.
Some very influential doctors, licensed MDs at the end of the 19th century, recognized, “This can be a way to complement allopathic medicine,” which was growing in Brazil just as it was around the world. “We can use some of the formulas that are created through Kardec’s writings to provide community centers, which will give people insight into the spiritual aspect of why it is they’re either psychologically disturbed or physically compromised.” A few of these doctors, who were influential because they were so highly respected, decided to get involved with politics.
They helped to bring Spiritism, in other words, the work of Allan Kardec, into Brazilian culture so that it would be more readily available. Especially to people who were looking for help with their psychological or physical functioning. It was always seen as a complement to allopathic care. It was not a replacement. The message was not, “Come to a Spiritist center and everything will be okay. You’ll never have any problems again. Don’t go to a doctor.” There was none of that. No anti-psychiatry. No anti-MD.
Spiritist Centers & Community Care Model
From that point of view, the Spiritist community centers were the first ones that grew up from the writings of Kardec. What happens in these particular centers is that a person can come in, and they would speak to someone who is a social worker, and could be a licensed social worker, depending on the center. The social worker interviews the person and finds out what difficulties they’re having in their life, either psychological, physical, or both, and also finds out if this person is very poor. Do they need food? Do they need clothing? Are their children getting adequate care and vaccinations?
There would be an interview. At that interview, the social worker would also say, “We recommend that you do X, Y, and Z within our community center.” Some of the larger community centers that I visited in São Paulo, and we’re talking back in the early part of this century, so in the years 2000 to 2010. They supplied a food kitchen. They had offered charity, especially to women who might be very young and had no money, but had children to take care of. They offered prenatal care. They offered free clothing.
Oftentimes, older people who were Spiritists would get together in the community center and create these lovely packages for young women who were having a baby and didn’t have much support. That was also good for the older people because they were doing something useful and also had social contact. They also provided energy medicine in the form of something that we are familiar with through Reiki. In Brazilian Spiritism, they call it a pass or passe in Portuguese. It’s a similar thing to Reiki.
It is hands-on healing in a way, but they don’t touch a person. In other words, they’re 6 to 8 inches outside of the person’s physical body, but they are designed to help a person feel more balanced in their emotional, physical, and spiritual life. It’s very popular. People love coming to a Spiritist center to get this free energy work. There are a lot of free services that are given in the largest centers, including sometimes free dentistry and free medical care. Spiritism grew because it was offering a lot to people who didn’t have enough money, but clearly needed help with their physical and mental well-being.
Spiritualism grew because it offered a lot to people who didn’t have much money but clearly needed help with their physical and mental well-being. Share on XAs it grew, it also started training people to give the energy work. It also started training people who had gifts as psychic mediums. This was considered not unusual in the Brazilian culture because if there was already a sense of, “Spirits exist. We interact in a meaningful way with spirits,” then someone who is a medium, who can connect with beings who are not in a body, is not considered abnormal or pathological.
Training & Supervision Of Mediums
It was then, back over a century ago, and is still now considered extremely important to give mediums sufficient training so that they can be accurate in their work. Their work might be assessing someone to get to the very roots of why it is that they’re feeling psychologically imbalanced or why it is that they’re having physical issues. A well-trained medium who can do this intuitive reading for a person to diagnose them does take a lot of training to be accurate, because a lot of people who are natural mediums are taking in a tremendous number of impressions.
They need to be able to be very succinct and accurate in what is coming through if they’re going to be helpful to someone who is looking for a diagnosis and possibly even a treatment plan. The mediums within the community centers are always in training. They’re always under supervision. They will continue to be under supervision for as long as they do mediumship work. None of them is acting alone. They always act within groups. That is to help each other.
In other words, support each other during these mediumistic meetings, which can be taxing. Also, within the group, there’s a sense of, “Yes, this work is difficult, but we can do it. We can help each other move into these unusual states of consciousness that are about mediumship. We can help each other come back from them, so we can operate in a very balanced way in our lives.”
One of the things that is a cornerstone for Spiritists, and especially those who operate as energy workers or mediums, is ethics. Spiritists are extremely strong about the importance of leading an ethical life in order to move along in your spiritual evolution. I would say that was a bit off-putting for me at first when I became involved with studying Spiritism.
What part was off-putting?
The very strong emphasis on ethics in the way it came through to me at first. If you imagine, even in the United States. If we think about Christian churches, there’s a very strong ethical component to Christianity, which is wonderful. I’m all for it. There are some people who might be on a spectrum of extremely rigid and extremely judgmental, yet they’re doing their best to come from an ethical place. There are other people on the spectrum who are ethical within themselves, but are not as judgmental of other people, while standing on a platform of ethics being important.
I happened to meet some people who I felt were excessively judgmental. I’ve also met an abundance of people who are Spiritists, who are extremely ethical and follow the principles of Spiritism, but tend not to be as judgmental of other human beings. It’s a difficult place to stand and find your way with, to be highly ethical and moral without being excessively judgmental. We don’t want to lose our judgment.
There are a lot of people who have connected with John of God, a healer who is very well known internationally. They’ve thought, “He’s from Brazil. Spiritism is in Brazil, and so he must be a Spiritist.” I’ve had the opportunity to interview him, to document his work, and to bring people to get healing from him. I have had a number of interactions. He has never claimed to be a Spiritist. If he were a Spiritist, first of all, he would have to be studying Allan Kardec’s books.
The man is illiterate. He can write his name, but he can’t read. Therefore, he cannot study. The study of materials is one of the strong components of Spiritism. It’s expected of everyone to study the materials. That’s not to become dogmatic because the materials are not dogmatic. It’s to provide a way for people to think through, “Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? What is this interaction with spirits? What is spiritual evolution?”
Without some of those prompts, people don’t usually examine themselves in those ways. John of God was not able to study. He also put himself out as the medium to go to. He was not working in a group. He did not have any supervision because the person he had gone to, Chico Xavier, had passed away. He had no one overlooking him, giving him feedback, or helping him if he was having a bad day. That was out.
That was another thing that is completely against what Spiritists believe is important. He was not getting training. Not only supervision, but no training, and always working alone. In fact, he was emphatic that he was the medium that people were coming to. Those are just a few things to speak about. As we came to know, he had lost track of his own ethics, if he had any, because he was a sex addict. He had a real problem and was taking advantage of women, lying to women who were coming to him for healing, and entrancing them by his power to come into his private offices.
In many cases, they were raped. His ethics were totally out of place. He was not following Spiritism. We could call him a Spiritualist, meaning he clearly believed that, yes, there’s a meaningful interaction between the spirits and human beings. He was very facile with being able to connect with beings on the other side who could be a healing force in other people’s lives. He had that as a gift. Unfortunately, he did not have the guardrails that Spiritism provides for people who want to follow the Spiritist way. I’m doing an awful lot of talking here, Tim.
This is what we wanted. We had the idea that you were laying out for us the difference between just a spiritual approach to things and the structured guidelines that have been given in Spiritism. You might have used the term, or my brain filled it in. They provide guardrails. The dangerous part of the road, what do we do? We put guardrails up. Not because everybody needs them, but occasionally, if something goes wrong, we don’t want to go way off the deep end.
While Spiritism can’t tell you exactly this, this, and this that you need to do. Spiritism provides the guidelines for anybody who wants to use that approach, so they stay within an acceptable range of behavior and ethics, and hopefully, with an eye toward marking, watching, and accounting for progress. We’re going to do the things that work. We’re going to quit doing the things that don’t work. We’re going to be willing to look outside the box if whatever the allopathic medical community has to offer isn’t providing sufficient results. We’ll look elsewhere because results are probably possible.
I would say that it has always been in my mind complementary to allopathic care. In other words, it’s not just for people who are disaffected by allopathic care, like, “This isn’t working. I’m going to go down to the Spiritist Center.” It’s more like, “Allopathic medicine can take me a certain distance, but I need more. I’m going to go to a Spiritist Center and get the spiritual perspective on why it is that I’m having these problems.”
Spiritism has always been complementary to allopathic care. Share on XLet me ask us to slow down and talk about why I would need more. It’s because of the science from other medical doctors who had their own physical problems. Whatever the allopathic medical field provided for them left them with a brick wall. They couldn’t go any further. They went out and looked outside the box.
They have said things like, “A healthy, vibrant, thriving human life, flourishing human life isn’t rocket science. We need clean water, good food, and some sleep. We also need a sense of purpose, a connection to community, a sense of love in our lives, and an awareness of our connection to other people and things. If it’s not just physical, there are these other ways we can connect to people.”
Allopathic medicine doesn’t look at any of that. It doesn’t make allopathic medicine bad or wrong. It means it’s too narrow to encompass the whole experience of your humanity. When what you’re doing isn’t working, please feel free to try something else. Spiritism is one solid way to supplement whatever your medical doctor might give you for your mental health challenges.
I have been given permission by this man, who is Brazilian, to tell his story because it’s an excellent way of looking into some of the advantages of the Spiritist way of care.
Is this one of the case studies from your book Spiritism and Mental Health?
Case Study: Marcelo’s Psychosis & Spiritual Healing
I believe I mentioned it. You may recognize it as we get into it. When I heard about Marcelo, told the story of being approximately 28 years old, and he was still living at home. He was not married, but he had a circle of friends. He lived in São Paulo. He had no meaningful trauma to report from his early life. He was in a job that he liked. Things were rolling along, but he became depressed spontaneously. There’s no big story around it.
His parents took him to one of the best psychiatrists in São Paulo. The man said, “Antidepressants will help you.” He started taking the antidepressants, but unfortunately, things got worse. Not only was he depressed, but he started having energetic experiences as if things were crawling up and down his arms. He would literally try to shake them off. He was irritable because of these odd sensations that were going on in his body. He could not understand what was happening to him.
His family was Catholic and practiced Catholicism, and was very used to that way of thinking. Within Brazil, there are some people who feel like anything to do with spiritualism, including Spiritism, is weird. Don’t go there. We find the same in the United States. That’s nothing odd. Marcelo had no way of thinking about these energetic experiences, other than to say, this is weird, and this is abnormal.
He started hearing voices. Sometimes three or four voices simultaneously within his head that were not coming from any human being outside of himself. He thought, “That’s it. I know it. I’m crazy. This is it.” Off he went to the psychiatrist again. The psychiatrist concurred and said, “This is an example of psychosis. Let’s put you in the psych ward. We’ll observe you for a while, and see if things get better. Here’s an anti-psychotic.”
He was then taking at least two pills. In the psych ward, he tended to get even worse, meaning he was losing weight, wasn’t eating, and wasn’t sleeping well. His parents became very alarmed. They took him out, and decided to be in a relaxed way, travel around the country, go to the beach, and eat out to relax. Symptoms continued for Marcelo. To make a long story short, they ended up taking him to a Spiritist psychiatric hospital in a small village called Palmelo in Brazil, which still exists.
Within the process of his being admitted to the hospital, he was again interviewed by a social worker. He was given a full medical workup by a licensed allopathic physician. They discovered nothing wrong with him physically. He had no cultural difficulties with racism, poverty, or things of that nature, bullying kind of thing, that might have come from living on the street. He was admitted to the hospital.
Within the first few days, he was also seen by a person who was a medical intuitive. This person, who was a highly trained and very gifted medium, could see that Marcelo was gifted as someone who could channel more highly evolved beings to benefit himself as well as to benefit other people. He was also gifted as an energy worker. The medium in this case did not say to Marcelo, “This is what’s going on with you.”
Instead, he started introducing ideas to Marcelo that would help him move out of his relatively rigid thinking that if he was having unusual energetic experiences or hearing voices, it had to mean he was crazy. Very gently, they introduced him to other people who were gifted with the same gifts that Marcelo had. Within the hospital setting, he was eating a good nutrition and being able to exercise, like playing soccer in the fields outside the hospital and joining with others in the community.
Having access to people who were having the same experiences he had but were not considered psychotic was a big opening. He opened up to the notion that perhaps he had some psychic gifts. Within a short period of time, he was trained within the Spiritist community center adjacent to the hospital to become a medium and an energy worker. Within several months, he was going back into the hospital to offer energy work to the people who were patients in the hospital under supervision.
It’s what you said before. The whole thing with Spiritism is that there’s a structure. There are these guardrails. We have supervision. We don’t have cowboys out there creating their own no-holes-barred approach.
We also don’t have mediums who are hanging out a shingle and working by themselves.
There’s supervision.
That’s an important thing. One thing that I was totally impressed by when I came to it, and I’m still deeply impressed by, is that if you are working as a medium within the structure of Spiritism, you give it all for free. The notion is that it’s a God-given gift that you have these particular gifts of, in Marcelo’s case, channeling as energy for people, for energy work, but also channeling beings of a more highly evolved nature. It’s given for free, which means there’s no egotistical notion of, “I’m pretty good, so I’m going to charge quite a bit of money for offering someone a reading or channeling from their spirit guide.”
If you are working as a medium within the structure of Spiritism, you give it all for free. The idea is that these particular gifts are God-given. Share on XThe layers of goodness that come from that are hard to put words on for me. It’s the idea that number one, I’m helping a person, which might be me in this case, through a mental health challenge. The next thing is, I’m recognizing that there’s more going on here than just my physical body and what I might create in terms of a sense of meaning for my life. If I’m going back into a Spiritist center and donating my time to do energy readings or this medium work. It’s because I recognize there’s a lot more going on here than what my little nine-bit mind can construct as a sense of meaning in life or a sense of purpose.
This is a way to participate in that flow. I was given this gift. Let me give it back. The good part about that is, it peels away layers of complexity that come in when we have multiple or dual relationships going on. It’s so difficult to navigate those. They’re necessary at times, especially when people live in smaller communities. You can’t say, “I’m not going to go see the therapist because he’s my next-door neighbor. It’s because he’s the only therapist in town.”
We learn how to keep things compartmentalized and respect privacy, without having the secrecy that has to come when you want to have abuse. How long did the abuse last once it hit the newspapers, once it became a headline? It doesn’t last, in most cases. Some of the higher-ups, some of the bigger trees, take a lot more to fall, but it all eventually falls when the light of awareness hits it.
Your book, Spiritism and Mental Health, which is quite a gift, contains, at least in one of the chapters you wrote, the idea of these case studies, like the one you gave of Marcelo. What I want to highlight here is that, as I was reading through that chapter in the book, it might have been Marcelo or another person who, after the fact, returned to their life or their home. They had this therapist, that medical doctor, that physical therapist, and that panoply of people and things helping and supporting.
As I read it, I thought, “That’s wonderful that this person would have access to all that stuff, yet most of us don’t.” Can you address a little bit of how Spiritism and the things it offers as an opening up of the toolkit for how to deal with a mental health challenge, how it can happen even if you can’t access four or five external professionals?
The Value Of Free Community-Based Support
In Marcelo’s case, his family did have money. I’m sure if they had decided to go back into their life in São Paolo, they may have accessed some unusual alternative therapists, but when I met them, they were living in Palmelo in a rental. Marcelo was very happy to be getting the training he was getting in being able to harness his ability to channel more highly evolved beings, as well as the training he was getting to do energy work. It was all for free.
He was being held by a community of other people who recognized that he was gifted. Some of them had similar gifts, and so he had peer support in that way all for free. He was not being assigned that he should go to various other people, like a psychiatrist, another teacher, or various other people who he might need in order to stay balanced, because the community itself was holding him. He was not feeling unbalanced.
When I met him, he was on a very modest, almost subclinical dose of the antipsychotics, because he was still in the process of withdrawing. His father, who had been a banker, was so deeply impressed with what was going on with his son that he decided to take some training as well, all for free. I have quite a bit of background in understanding what’s going on within the Spiritist communities.
My guess is that they decided to live in Palmelo for a period of years, so that they could deepen in their training all for free and take advantage of the community support. If when they decided to go back to São Paulo to be closer to family or closer to old friends, that they also joined a Spiritist community within Sao Paulo, also all for free.
The largest Spiritist centers in São Paulo, which I visited, offer things like community events, art shows, musical events, lectures, and energy work, as I’ve said before. They also have areas where people are doing charity work. I mentioned before, older people coming in and creating layettes for babies and young mothers, twelve-step programs being held within the building, or classes for young children, where they would be in kindergarten, but be introduced to some of the notions that there is evolution and growth.
We’re not talking about the same model that we have in the United States, where people go to individual practitioners, who may be charging a considerable amount of money in order to stay balanced. We’re talking about the balance that can come from being part of a very active community, where you participate not only for your own edification and support, but you are also giving back through charity. Maybe you’re participating in the free food that’s offered, the free clothes, or something of that nature. It’s all contributing towards your own spiritual evolution.
Aside from you, what evidence is there that Spiritism is gaining a foothold here in the US? I didn’t intend that to be a curveball question.
Global Impact & Acceptance Of Spiritual Approaches
I was fortunate to be the honored guest of several Spiritist community centers, as well as Spiritist psychiatric hospitals, of which there are 50 now in Brazil. It also allowed me to meet some of the people who were the leaders in the field, as well as people who were researchers and doing a lot of publishing. One of those people is Alexander Moreira-Almeida. He’s Brazilian. He teaches at the university in a medical school in Juiz de Fora, but he has also been extremely active on the international stage of bringing spirituality into mental health care.
He has a whole series of videos online. Some of them are in English. Some of them are in Portuguese. He is making a huge amount of effort through his publications, as well as videos, in order to educate people about spirituality and the importance of spirituality in mental health. He is not just a spokesperson for Spiritism, but he has clearly brought in knowledge of Spiritism. He is a Spiritist, but he’s brought in knowledge of Spiritism as just one avenue for bringing spirituality into mental health care.
I was so pleased when I heard that he had won a major award from the American Psychiatric Association for his contribution to the conversation around religion and spirituality coming into mental health care. To me, even though he lives in Brazil and works in Brazil, he’s well known internationally. He’s had a fabulously important impact in terms of helping people to understand that spirituality can contribute massively to health care and especially to mental health.
There is the idea that excluding it is detrimental to your mental health.
Thank you. There is that as well, but we don’t want to look at the negative side as much as the positive.
In that statement that I’m trying to make and the thought I’m trying to put out there, it’s simply acknowledging that every human being has these aspects to their life. Whether they choose to develop them, become consciously aware of them, or not, they’re still there. I don’t have to wait until I’m having a mental health crisis to benefit from awareness of what Spiritism offers.
Right on, Tim. I’m with you on that. Spiritism is dedicated to spiritual evolution or personal development, or we could say from another angle, to manifesting your full human potential. That is extremely important.
Spiritism is dedicated to spiritual evolution or personal development. From another perspective, it’s about manifesting your full human potential. Share on XWho wants more out of life than to manifest their full human potential? I don’t know. I’m not sure there is anything more than that.
I’m with you.
We’re getting close to time here. I want to make sure that you make any statements.
I wanted to put in a word about the program at Harvard on human flourishing because it’s alive and well. I went to a conference that they put on. The program itself and the research that they’re doing and publishing about what is it that contributes to human flourishing is an extremely important thread to weave into our conversation.
My sense is that a mental health care professional needs to be aware of what human flourishing is and help people into that zone. Not just say, “You feel depressed. Here’s a pill so you don’t feel that anymore.” That can be extremely helpful for some people for some period of time. I’m not putting it down. It isn’t all terrible. Over the long haul, it’s not addressing probably the core issue that’s happening.
It doesn’t even ask why that pain is here or why this struggle is happening.
It also doesn’t even touch on what our full human potential is about and how to help someone manifest it.
I’m thrilled that you’re willing to talk about this again. I want to put a word or two in here about how, as a professional in the field, occasionally, I run into people that no matter what we do, it’s a brick wall. They’re not making any progress. I’m talking about maybe three or four people a year in my one caseload, maybe not quite that many.
When that happens, it’s so clear to me that something like Spiritism, or a connection to a higher sense of self or other energies, is so necessary, yet it’s almost prohibited in my culture and with my professional licensure. That’s a struggle. I’m so grateful to have resources like IMHU.org, the Integrated Mental Health University. The work that you’re doing there and the work that you’re continuing to do when you travel back to Brazil lifts my spirits. I’m grateful for it.
Thank you so much, Tim. It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to talk about something that I care a lot about and that I feel is also promising in terms of bringing it to the United States and outside of Brazil. It’s a delight to be able to talk about it with you and have you appreciate it.
I do. I’m grateful for the work you’re doing. I’m looking forward to our next conversation and what it might be about. Thank you so much for taking the time. It’s been a delight.
Thank you very much. It has been a delight. Until the next time.
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Dr. Emma Bragdon is the Founder and Executive Director of Integrative Mental Health University, IMHU.org. She earned her PhD in Transpersonal Psychology in 1987 and was licensed in California as a marriage, family, and child therapist in 1988. As a pioneer who has helped define the field of spiritual emergency, Emma has published seven books and co-produced two documentary films.
Within IMHU, Emma has trained over 130 spiritual emergence coaches who are available to support individuals disoriented or in distress as they open spiritually. She also leads a small group of health care providers to Brazil once a year to learn about the Spiritist paradigm of mental health care from Spiritist practitioners. Emma maintains a private practice consulting internationally via Zoom.
Important Links
- Dr. Emma Bragdon
- Integrated Mental Health University
- Emma Bragdon – Founder And Chair Of IMHU.org
- Spiritism and Mental Health
- Alexander Moreira-Almeida on LinkedIn
- Books & Films
About Dr. Emma Bragdon
Emma Bragdon is the Founder and Executive Director of Integrative Mental Health University, IMHU.org.
She earned her PhD in Transpersonal Psychology in 1987 and was licensed in California as a Marriage, Family, Child Therapist in 1988.
As a pioneer who has helped define the field of spiritual emergency, Emma has published 7 books and co-produced 2 documentary films. Within IMHU Emma has trained over 130 Spiritual Emergence Coaches• who are available to support individuals disoriented or in distress as they open spiritually.
She also leads a small group of healthcare providers to Brazil once a year to learn about the Spiritist paradigm of mental healthcare from Spiritist practitioners. Emma maintains a private practice, consulting internationally via zoom.
