Dagmar Ramos, MD, began seeing spirits and realized she had healing abilities at a very young age. She and her brother, Jeziel Ramos, were raised in a family with a strong Spiritist heritage. Dagmar now has a private practice as a psychiatrist, donates some time as a medium in a Spiritist Center, and assists Jeziel, who is president of Casa de Euripedes Barsanulfo—a Spiritist Psychiatric Hospital in Goiania, Brazil. For the people of Goiania, a city of 2.5 million, Hospital Euripedes is the preferred place to go for someone suffering a severe mental or emotional crisis.
Situated in a beautiful natural setting, Hospital Euripedes offers the most modern conventional psychiatric and psychological services as well as dynamic spiritual support. We were amazed to find that the mediums in charge of the spiritual healing services donate hours and hours of their time without charge. A basic principle of Spiritist mediums is “What has been given for free by God should be freely given to others.”
It was interesting to find that the majority of the mediums working in this hospital had previously suffered a severe mental emotional crisis of their own and recovered before undergoing the long-term training to become fully qualified to work as Spiritist mediums. (This cannot be assumed to be the case for all or even most Spiritist mediums who work at Spiritist community centers.)
Certainly having a mental breakdown gives one more compassion and understanding for a person going through similar challenges. We wondered if these breaks were part of a spiritual opening each medium had had. If so, their experiences would be similar to the shamans’ experiences we have previously documented – giving further credence to the term ‘Spiritual Emergency’ coined by one of our early interviewees, Stanislav Grof, MD. We are seeing how widespread these spiritual awakenings are happening around the world!
Next we will hear from one of the mental health professionals that also came to Brazil to learn about the use of Spiritism in mental health care.
