Conversations with the priest. Spiritual health
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In the Moscow studio of our TV channel, Doctor of Theology, medical specialist in the field of healthcare organization, cleric of the Gorodnitsky St. George Monastery, Archimandrite Alexander (Globa), answers questions. – What is spiritual health and what are its signs?
– Before we talk about what spiritual health is, we need to define what spirituality is. Spirituality is, first of all, the state of our soul, which can change and is the ultimate goal of our existence and being in this world, which should always be filled with certain spiritual, full-fledged, healthy forms. By this we must first of all understand being in the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle Paul advises, and a person needs to live not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And those who live according to the flesh should not condemn those who live according to the Spirit.
The Apostle Paul places a certain emphasis on the fact that people who live according to the spirit are happier, more joyful in their spiritual state than those who live according to the flesh, although these may be more emotional, more cheerful, as it seems from the outside. But it very often happens that these people are spiritually unhappy: receiving certain flashes of energy from emotions, from giving joy to each other (as they think), they become unhappy, exhausting the stock of emotions that everyone has. Emotions are not a constant, no matter how paradoxical it may sound. And they must always arise in a spiritual person through spiritual qualities, but the person must at the same time be spiritual.
So, by spiritual health we mean such a person’s stay when he is freed from passions, from illnesses, because passions are spiritual illnesses and they enslave a person, make him spiritually unfree, preoccupied with small issues that do not have any important weight, so that a person experiences joy now. But these passions, these little things have enormous weight in the Kingdom of Heaven, because any sin now committed by man, unrepentant, which we may have committed and forgotten or do not consider to be a sin, will prevent us from entering the Kingdom of Heaven. And a spiritual person understands this very well, resorts to the sacraments of the Church and tries to get rid of forgotten sins - from a state that makes him not native to the Kingdom of Heaven.
– Can we say that spiritual health is akin to serenity?
– Serenity is, of course, a beautiful word, but it can also be characteristic of a non-believer. Let’s say a person has a certain character and mind, he is serene, but he does not believe in God, in the Kingdom of God. But at the same time, serenity is a quality of the soul, and it is good when people who trust in the will of God, in God’s Providence, live and know that human life is not an end point, there is a continuation - in the Kingdom of Heaven. For this reason, serenity is given by God as an addition to everything else. The Lord says: Seek first of all the Kingdom of Heaven, and everything else will be added to you - both money and what is necessary for life - everything that a person needs to live in this world, the Lord promises. And as the Lord promises to people who really believe in Him, He fulfills everything.
– What is the difference between mental and spiritual health?
– Mental health is less perfect than spiritual health, but it is very important: a mentally unhealthy person has various mental disorders, psychiatric diagnoses, neurosis-like conditions, which then flow into organic brain lesions. When very big disruptions occur there, then they say that the person is mentally ill. And in clinics for the mentally ill, where they help to regain the joy of perceiving the world, the joy of being a full-fledged member in society, people try to restore their mental health.
Mental health is everything that is connected with our emotions, and it is very important for an Orthodox person, and we must evaluate it through the prism of spirituality. A person receives emotions that can be bright, or, conversely, dull, or completely absent - all this speaks about the person’s mental status.
Let's say a person comes to the theater and there receives a certain charge of vivacity, emotions, emotional stress, receives, as he thinks, food for thought, for evaluating his life in the light of what he sees. But all this will be connected with what he received here and now. Of course, there is a benefit, because he goes through a certain educational stage. Each person, receiving information from the outside, through his spiritual perception of the world, receives a certain lesson, experience, but a believer, realizing that there is a Kingdom of Heaven and a person has a soul and responsibility before God, begins to perceive everything through the prism of spiritual perception - even mental phenomena what is in this world. And a believer, receiving some kind of spiritual emotional phenomena, evaluating them through a spiritual prism, receives a very important lesson for himself in order to be a member of the Orthodox society who can give the light of joy and love to other people.
– Is the ability to give a sign of spiritual health? What other signs?
- So many. The ability to love is probably the most important sign: when a person can sacrifice his time, his last piece of bread, his things. When Christ speaks about love, He gives many vivid examples relating to our daily life. And everything that He says about such love cannot even be written down in all the books; and the Apostle Evangelist John the Theologian speaks clearly about this, and the evangelists talk about this - it is impossible to write down everything that happened, what the Lord Jesus Christ spoke about: words cannot convey the fullness of Divine love.
The Lord says that a person should strive for the state in which the Lord Jesus Christ was, because He did not become man in vain - it was necessary to show that every human soul is capable of changing and entering the Kingdom of Heaven by the grace-filled will and gift of Divine love for man. And everyone can, with the help of God, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit - and this, of course, is spirituality: a person who perceives this information, who sees spiritual reasoning, has his eyes open for this vision, his mind is open for spiritual reasoning, his heart is open for perception and processing of spiritual information. Yes, the information still needs to be processed and put into practice. And the fruits of this spiritual information are also necessary, you need to understand how it affected a person, how a person then opens up to the world, people, and God. So there are a lot of components that a person must cultivate throughout his life.
– What can interfere with spiritual health?
– Sin, passion, dislike for God, for oneself, laziness, everything that seems to be disgusting to a person - according to the nature of a sinful carnal person: you want to pamper yourself, lie down, not do anything, skip, not pay attention, you want to be paid attention to attention, loved, praised, admired you, I want to be proud, to be conceited - everything carnal, physical leads away from the spiritual.
The Lord calls us to throw off these “garments,” which are absolutely unnatural for the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord says: “Put on appropriate clothing.” Emotional, sinful clothes are beggarly clothes, stinking, dirty, in them it is impossible to enter even the threshold of the Kingdom of Heaven: the angels of God will throw you out of the bridal chamber. And the Lord says that it is with the help of clothes - love, mercy, open spiritual, high moral qualities of a person, sacrifice that we will be worthy to enter the palace of the Heavenly Father for the wedding feast of the Son. We must remember these spiritual covenants - instructions, rules - of inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven, and then life will be easier.
But every person must know that the experience that he received here and now must always be assessed through the prism of spiritual vision, spiritual perception... A spiritual person must remember that he is a sinner, and repent, resort to the sacraments of the Church - Confession, Unction, Communion: burn these sins. Then he becomes closer to God. In Orthodox Christians who live a special, intense spiritual life, one can see special people. Look, for example, at our saints, at our Primate of the Church. Very often there is a feeling that these people are not of this world, they are like angels, they do not live by the same needs, not by the same laws that exist in worldly, carnal life. They live differently, at the Throne of God, and burn out like candles on a church candlestick. The Lord calls us to live this way.
Very often, clergymen, especially in Tsarist Russia and post-revolutionary Russia, who had a special spirit of love for the Church, said: “We must live in such a way as to live - to burn, to serve, and not to smoke the sky.” This is the kind of zealous service we should have in order to please God, but in order to please, we must try everything: here is such Eastern wisdom that we must try everything, but try it to please God, and not in order to become an inexcusable slave in the eyes of God, only deserves to be kicked out. You need to please God: both with a prayer rule and a certain rhythm of spiritual life, and remember God all the time. A person must do whatever is necessary to please God. And when you look at such people, you ask Him to grant you and everyone this spirit of special service and love for God, for the Throne of God, a special desire to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, which the Lord promises to everyone who will live for him .
– Can a person himself adequately assess his spiritual health or ill health?
“A person,” as it probably seems to him, “can do anything.” But if we approach this answer professionally, then, of course, everyone should have their own spiritual mentor - a confessor (who, in turn, also has a spiritual mentor).
Our people really like to shift responsibility for their thoughts and actions to their spiritual father, who confesses and gives some kind of pastoral advice. But in the eyes of God this will look like deceit: every person must know the Law of God, feel in his heart the truth of God, the will of God, in order to be saved. And everyone should know that it is impossible to shift responsibility for the actions you have taken to another person. A full member of Orthodox society must remember this.
There is such a condition - it is called oligophrenic-like - when a person thinks little. This is a mental disorder when he begins to think that everything said in the Holy Scriptures or the Holy Fathers, especially about the responsibility of every person before God, before the truth of God, will bypass him - he will, as it were, avoid it all, at random he will slip through. But the Lord protects us from this, saying: “In what I find you, in that I will judge you” (Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew 47). He kind of scares us a little, but, first of all, he reminds us that every person must be sober all the time: remember that the hour will come when you will appear before God - and what will you say when you see God? After all, then special spiritual feelings will open, you will see your sin, you will see all its insidiousness, it will stink in front of you so that it will be impossible to breathe. And, most importantly, your conscience will open in such a way that you will burn from the inside from the shame that shames you in the eyes of God - you had precisely the spiritual grain of God’s truth, and you trampled this grain in every possible way and committed sin and lawlessness. And the Lord says that a person will burn precisely because of this unchanged state of his, unrepentance, dislike for God, lack of faith in the Kingdom of Heaven.
There is such an anecdote, I don’t know whether it’s relevant or not. The atheists have died and come to the Apostle Paul: “Can we get an appointment with Jesus Christ?” He comes to Jesus, reports that the atheists have come, and asks what to tell them. The Lord says: “Go tell me that I don’t exist.” So that a person does not live by these principles - after all, if a person commits a sin, he thinks: “But God will not notice, will not see,” and when a person will have to answer for his actions, when he will ask God for a special place in the villages of the righteous, as if they would not say to him: “There is no such place, what are you asking for?”
Therefore, the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers call a person to sober thinking and remembrance, so that a person, growing and improving through the Holy Spirit, does everything that is required to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
– Is it possible to judge his spiritual health by a person’s appearance?
- That would be good. Let’s say they look at Hollywood actors and actresses and are amazed at their beauty, their appearance, their shape, but what’s the point? All this was done to arouse base instincts in a person - perhaps sexual or some other, which would revive the dead moments of life in a person.
A person should think about the Kingdom of Heaven, about his sins, but he lives and grows rich in sin, in lawlessness, he is visited by lustful thoughts. How much money, time, and their precious health people begin to spend to be like certain people, but, as a rule, these are fornicators who do not know God. A spiritual person must think about this. But this is one extreme.
It often happens like this: you look at a person and begin to mix in your dirty thoughts through the visualization of his image. Let’s say you go and say to a person: “Well, you didn’t look at me, you probably have bad thoughts, you thought about something bad.” But the person thinks about something completely different, maybe he even prays.
An emotional mask is the prerogative of those who do this professionally. The actor, of course, will play on these feelings with the hearts and minds of people. But what quality of a person is this – spiritual or mental? Of course, it’s emotional. A spiritual person may not even say anything, may not even look, may not even have eyes to see, but in his heart, in his mind, he will feel that he has done something wrong. Some kind of special communication among spiritual people. When you come to a spiritual person, to the spiritual pillar of Orthodoxy, you begin to feel it at the level of spiritual substances affecting the heart and mind of a person. How? We don't know, but we know it's happening.
So people come to the bones of saints - Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Sarov, Alexander of Svir. It would seem that terrible bones speak of death. But in a person waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven, all this speaks of one thing: that we change and become worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. So, looking at their relics, of course, we cannot say that there is external beauty there, but there is spiritual beauty, spiritual splendor, spiritual wings (they are called prayer, prayer, remembrance of God), which are given to every person so that he soared above everything that surrounded him.
Sins, worries, worldly responsibilities and obligations - above all this there must be spirituality, in order to cover it all, to get away from everything that pulls down, closes from God. Therefore, when you begin to tell or explain something to a person, the spiritual one will understand all this, but the spiritual one may be afraid. That is why pastors have such a subject as pastoral psychology. Let’s say that when a person approaches a priest, he needs to be positioned in some way: to smile, when circumstances require, perhaps to make a stern appearance. It is necessary to learn to contact a living person who, perhaps, comes to church and wants to see in it everything that he has seen in the world.
Therefore, we, priests working with people who come to church, need to use some psychological techniques in order to provide some kind of help, support, so that through skillful communication with the person coming to God, we can strengthen his will to stay in the church and be close to him. with God blessing. Therefore, there should be some pleasant features in communication - I’m not talking about appearance, but a person should be neat, natural, with his appearance saying that he is God’s creation and is ready to see in every person the same creation as himself. Here the answer is this: we must look at everything with spiritual eyes.
– What is the connection between a person’s spiritual health and his speech?
– There will also be very similar answers here. In God, everyone is alive, the departed saints are also alive, we have never heard their speeches and intonations, but we know that they are beautiful - we feel them spiritually.
There are differences among people suffering from some pathologies in the emotional and spiritual sphere, but people living in the Holy Spirit try to be less emotional and talk more about God, about the Kingdom of Heaven and how to get there. Here, of course, we cannot condemn those who will resort to certain techniques that they learned in some school - everything is good when it is done for God. There, the personal, the inadmissible, which is not even worth talking about, is excluded - an Orthodox, spiritual person does what is within the framework of the church, but cannot even think about what is not included in them.
Therefore, the speech of a spiritual person always calms, but at the same time it awakens in the heart the remembrance of sins, the Kingdom of Heaven, and responsibility. But this excitement always leads to peace; such a person knows that no matter how he sins, God loves him. And it is the duty of a spiritual person to ensure that this inner spiritual state never leaves him.
You can put a person in a state of anxiety, intimidation, so that he can lay hands on himself: “I’m not needed here, and God doesn’t need me, there’s no need to live like this at all,” but a spiritual person will always use everything for the good of the person’s soul , for the good of his spirit - so that the spirit is always cheerful and forces a person to change, transform, so that he receives special beauty in the eyes of God.
And the Lord promises a spiritual person a great reward for this, He says that this becomes the first step towards discovering the gift of Divine love. For example, Seraphim of Sarov. When people came to him, everyone calmed down, received spiritual joy, hearing the words from his lips: “Christ is risen, my joy!” And it was not feigned, but now sometimes you hear the same words from a person, even adorned with gray hair, but you feel the falsehood very easily. With Seraphim of Sarov, everything was different: a person came and received a band-aid for his spiritual wounds, medicine for his heart, received exercises for his mind, leaving Seraphim of Sarov, he wanted to pray, live in God, for God and according to the Divine commandments, to reach the Kingdom of Heaven.
– Why does a spiritual person try to make his speech less emotional?
–Speech is a very powerful tool to make others hear and perform. This is a very powerful tool. And a spiritual person understands that the information that is taught to a person through speech must have a certain quality, and it must be spiritual, it should not be overly emotional, spiritual, such that it clogs the ears, but sufficient for the person to hear, perceive, realize and received all the spiritual wealth needed for his salvation. Therefore, calm, intelligible speech is easier to perceive, pacifies, and calms.
A person is always looking for something, the human mind always wants to learn something, discover something new. The “yellow press” is aimed at these properties of the human mind. Therefore, spiritual speech, as it were, covers all this, becomes like a balm: it enters all the small cracks of human consciousness and does special spiritual work there, and a person begins to change and becomes suitable for the Kingdom of Heaven.
– Is it true to say that spiritual health is always accompanied by joy, and a gloomy person is most likely spiritually unhealthy?
– On the one hand, yes, because if a person is physically and mentally healthy, if he has financial, moral, and physical well-being, then this speaks of spiritual health. But, imagine, a person suffers from some kind of illness, is in a state of agony and at this time prays, while he has such a face that you can paint pictures of hell from it; but such a person is in spiritual joy, lives in hope. We should not perceive the state of human facial expressions as a reflection of his inner world.
Very often people have the need to visualize, identify, classify who looked at what and what they are like. The paradoxes of human consciousness are so interesting and confusing that you are amazed. Let's say a young man comes to confession. His earlobe was bitten off, the dog bit him. And when asked how it all happened, he replied: “I thought the dog was smiling.” He probably wanted to kiss her on the cheek, but the dog dodged and bit him behind the ear.
Also, a person can look at a wild animal, thinking that it loves him, smiles at him, and the animal is preparing to rush at him and eat him: like a crocodile - do you know that when he eats, he always cries? This is how his anatomy works. And when a person watches a crocodile devouring its prey, he thinks that the crocodile is grieving that it caused damage, but all these are false feelings, mental ones. This has nothing in common with spirituality and the spiritual perception of the world and man, so a person must share all this.
A particularly spiritual person must be sober and look at a person’s heart, and not at his eyes, not at his emotions: there are such scoundrels, such actors that a person will be fooled in no time. These are the basic emotional things that happen when a mother cares for a child. For a child, facial expressions somehow connect the internal with the external. An adult notices everything, studies, remembers and can use all these skills, all his negative and positive experiences to fool another, make him unhappy, deceive him, use him. Therefore, a spiritual person always reasons.
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill quotes the words from the “Didache”: “If you want to show mercy, then let your mercy sweat in the palm of your hand,” that is, you must think about everything: won’t you make this person worse with this mercy? This is spiritual reasoning. A spiritual person saw a beggar, opens it: “Everything is on you,” shows him where he has everything, gives him the key to the apartment where the money is, comes home - and there are only bare walls... A person must have spiritual reasoning, must build this the plane of love, care, responsibility - not falling in love, but precisely love: we very often confuse the spiritual qualities of falling in love with the spiritual quality of love.
– What is the connection between material wealth and spiritual health?
– It may be direct or indirect, but most likely it exists. Suppose a person inherited a large fortune at birth, but how this affected him or will affect him is impossible to judge: the person did not show himself in any way.
If he created his wealth throughout his life through truth, through goodness, through the ability to use his internal resource - the brain, received knowledge, has such an ability as the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit, then, of course, this is a direct correlation with a positive spiritual state person.
If a person robbed someone, killed someone, took possession of their wealth, mismanaged or squandered it, causing damage and pain to people, then, of course, this is a negative spiritual state. It is associated with a negative spiritual vision and human existence - spirituality can be positive, or it can be negative; associated with the works of darkness is also a spiritual state. For whom is he doing this? For the sake of the prince of demons, for the sake of darkness, demons, for the sake of what makes a person unworthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And there is a positive spiritual state when a person does for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Most Holy Trinity, the Most Holy Theotokos, the saints who stand before the Throne of God and sing an eternal song of praise to Him). As you can see, he who has wealth, of course, is the manager of his heart, his soul and his mind.
Our Orthodox Church has such a prayer book as Hieromonk Seraphim Vyritsky. The millionaire, who was a merchant, acquired his wealth by honest labor, with the help of his intelligence, abilities and hard work, decided that this wealth would be useful in the Church of Christ. He lived in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg and was saved, the Lord gave him special gifts of the Holy Spirit, he was a good confessor, confessor, and people were saved next to this man.
And his contemporary Stepan Lianozov had oil rigs, extracted oil, and was a billionaire. And when the political structure of the state changed, he lost all his money... Not to change his life, to look at it spiritually, to improve spiritually, but he shot himself: he had unrequited love. A man who possessed enormous wealth, almost a contemporary of Seraphim Vyritsky - this is how he ends his life...
Using the example of the destinies of these people, the Lord shows us how we, living now, should navigate what vector to choose for ourselves. Remember, in the Holy Scriptures, when the Tower of Siloam fell and crushed 38 people, the Lord says: Were they more sinful than everyone else? No. But this is being done so that you, living here and now, remember and know that God’s Judgment will certainly be over every person.”
The Lord Himself will deal with the souls of people, but this is an example for the living, for the majority of the population: God is next to you. It was not God who killed them. The Lord gave man the will to live and make mistakes, but made man free: if the Lord had bound man, not allowing him to make mistakes, man would not have the right and opportunity to gain experience - this is an invaluable gift. There are negative experiences and there are positive ones, but this is human freedom, and the Lord gave humanity this quality. Therefore, it was not the Lord who killed, but people do everything so that they die and get sick. These are all the consequences of the fall of man and the human race.
– What are the qualities of a spiritually healthy family and a spiritually healthy society?
– Unfortunately, we cannot measure a person’s spirituality, there is no such device – a “spiritual meter”, but we can indirectly judge a person, his behavior, his attitude towards God, religion, the Church, the holy sacraments. It is impossible to say about a person that he is a believer if he received communion once in his life and does not remember when. A person cannot be called spiritual if the person does not live spiritually. If he listens to music, a brass band, then this does not make him a spiritual person. If a person lives according to the rules and his moral and ethical development and condition are high, this also does not speak of his special spiritual qualities and gifts, because this is what was put into him, but without a reference to the Kingdom of Heaven. You can raise a very highly moral and ethical atheist, he will deny God, the Church, the sacraments, salvation, he will say that a person lives here and now, he does not do evil, does not kill, does not steal and does quite positive things. But is this a spiritual person? No.
A spiritual person is one who understands that his whole life is built in order to please God and get into the Kingdom of Heaven, does everything for the sake of God, for the sake of the words of Christ, in order to be close to the One Whom a person loves. After all, Christ says: “If you want to be with Me, it will be very good, because you will receive the same joy of Divine love that I already have towards you. And when you get to the Kingdom of Heaven, this sensation, this feeling will open in you.” And such a person believes the words of the Lord and Savior and strives there. Therefore, external signs are prayer. If a person prays, strives for prayer, wants to be with God, with prayer, with church sacraments, wants the world to be transformed and saved through understanding through the Lord Jesus Christ, then such a person is spiritual, partakes of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, lives in God, and God lives in it. But if a person only strikes with his tongue, if he is only like ringing brass and a clanging cymbal, then there is no need to even think about the spiritual.
– Thank you for the conversation, bless our TV viewers.
– May God’s blessing, the Protection of the Queen of Heaven, the prayerful intercession of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and all the saints be with you all!
Presenter Denis Beresnev
Recorded by Elena Kuzoro
Mental health care and treatment
In the context of national efforts to develop and implement mental health policies, it is critical not only to protect and promote the mental well-being of citizens, but also to address the needs of persons with specific mental disorders.
Over the past decade, understanding of what needs to be done to address the growing burden of mental disorders has improved significantly. There is growing evidence that key interventions for priority mental disorders are effective and cost-effective in countries at different levels of economic development. Examples of such actions that are cost effective, feasible and affordable include:
- treating depression with psychotherapy and, in cases of moderate or severe depression, antidepressants;
- treatment of psychosis with antipsychotic drugs in combination with psychosocial support;
- taxation of alcoholic beverages and restrictions on their sale and advertising.
In addition, there are a number of effective interventions for suicide prevention, prevention and treatment of mental disorders in children, prevention and treatment of dementia, and treatment of substance use disorders. The WHO Mental Health Gap Action Program (mhGAP) has developed evidence-based guidelines for lay people to identify and manage a range of priority mental health disorders.
Personality
4. The system of values and motives of human behavior in his relations with the outside world, manifested in the recognition of universal human spiritual values, an active attitude towards the world, an active life position, is called a health component: 1) insufficient lighting, insufficient height of the workplace, periodic distractions from physical work2 ) unventilated room, poor lighting, lack of breaks, monotony of work3) lack of physical break, monotony of work
Recommended PC and PPC courses for teachers
Life with all its blessings can consume all our time. Worship is a time when we turn to God and Him alone. We stop whining, we stop thinking about ourselves. This is the time when we thank Him for everything He has done for us, His constant presence and much more. There are times when we cannot stop thinking about a problem. We repeat this in our minds over and over again. This behavior can cause mental illness. Reading a good book is both distracting and opens up new perspectives. Moreover, reading is an exercise for the mind.
Leadership
Plans determine the future; they give us motivation to act. If there are no goals, then today will be the same as yesterday, and the morning is no different from the night. Life turns into one monotonous straight line. Set goals for every day, week, year. Goals that you consider meaningful. Make sure they are realistic. Another example could be the famous healing of Ilya Muromets. For more than 30 years he lay on the slab because he had no strength in his legs. But when the holy elders came and healed his soul, he was able not only to get back on his feet, but also to go to war, bringing victory over his enemies. His heroic strength and fortitude brought him fame that continues to this day.
What is spirituality? Why spiritual practices won't help you become a spiritual person
That's all, dear reader! I hope you were able to find the answer to the question of what spiritual development is and how to achieve it. Harmony for you, so that your thinking becomes clearer and more collected, and then you will find inner balance, health and deep relationships that will contribute to the realization of your plans and desires, as well as improving the lives of those around you. Don't forget to subscribe to blog updates. See you soon! 1) this is a branch of medicine that studies the conditions necessary to maintain and improve health2) this is regular showering, washing hands and feet3) this is a person’s ability to prevent the occurrence of infectious diseases
