The Fiat Program offers interdisciplinary seminars for undergraduate students to support their integration of knowledge across the disciplines and their development of daily practices of caring for their own and one another’s mental health.
Mental Health, the Catholic Faith, and Notre Dame
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Neuroscience and Behavior and Theology, the course provides a framework for students to consider central questions related to the intersection of faith and mental health, including the etiology of mental illness, the meaning of suffering, conceptions of healing, and the importance of relationship to human flourishing. Students have the opportunity to reflect on how personal practices and the sacramental and communal life of faith can support the stewardship of their integral wellbeing as embodied souls.
Accompaniment and Mental Illness: Known in the Breaking of the Bread
This community engagement seminar offers students the opportunity to grow in the understanding and practice of the Catholic Social Tradition as it informs accompaniment for persons with mental illness. Students come to know the lived experience of serious mental illness by growing in friendship with members of the South Bend chapter of Clubhouse International, a program that promotes the recovery of adults living with mental illness by providing a welcoming community, meaningful work, and supported employment.
Reflections from our Students
“Through our class, I am able to better understand what healing might actually mean as an aspiring future physician and the deeper meaning it has beyond just a bodily experience. I have been able to integrate aspects of Neuroscience and our biological need for interdependence into the importance of relationship in calling us into deeper communion with God, which has been essential to increasing my knowledge of the obligation we have in supporting each other through community.”
– Crystal DiBiase, Senior (Majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior and Latino Studies)
“It’s remarkable how the insights we get to in class feel so right, as if these ideas have been right in front of me for a long time and the conversations in class have let me truly see them. I think that speaks to how wonderful the class is at tackling topics that are fundamental to the experience of living.”
– Lucas Alvarez, Senior (Majoring in Marketing and Economics)
“The class Mental Health, the Catholic Faith, and Notre Dame has allowed me to see how understanding the brain and its functions can shine a light on the beauty of humans as made in the image and likeness of God and on the different areas in which we all need healing and reconciliation with God and others. By expanding my knowledge of psychology and theology, it has helped clarify my aspirations to pursue a career in counseling through the integration of mental health and faith.”
– Lorenza Vielma Paredes, Junior (Majoring in Sociology and Theology)