Sir, - I wholeheartedly support Roger Downer's letter of September 15th. The promotion of science is indeed critical to our future development and progress and I am heartened at the content of your Editorial of September 8th.
However, in contrast to this, I am appalled at the contents of your health page of September 10th. A query from a patient complaining of depression was very competently dealt with by Dr Muiris Houston, whose advice was informed by scientific investigation and research. However, the accompanying "alternative advice" from Sarah Delamere Hurding, a "psychic healer", was disgraceful.
The suggestion that one healing session, or a good cry, can have any curative impact on depression demonstrates a gross lack of understanding of the condition. Recommending crystals and flower essences constitutes a harking back to the dark ages before science lifted the veil of our ignorance of such conditions, when people had no real option other than to appeal to witches, psychics and other such charlatans.
Her utterances concerning "negative energies that can be transmuted...demons in the mind... muscle testing...and depression that is ready to depart" have no demonstrated basis in reality.
I ask you to please refrain from publishing this kind of abject nonsense. It does nothing to promote science and its publication in a respected newspaper such as your own only lends credibility where none is deserved.
Incidently, may I also commend you on the absence of an astrology column in The Irish Times? - Yours, etc.,
Paul O'Donoghue, Principal Clinical Psychologist, Woodleigh Elm, Highfield Road, Dublin 6.