Spirituality and Mental Health across Cultures

Abstract

This book attempts to cover relatively new ground, opening up some exciting challenges. An important feature is the extent to which the material in the book leads to a focus on clinical practice. The fi rst section of this book discusses some of the factors relating religion and spirituality (R/S) to mental health. The second section deals with beliefs and practices in di ff erent world religions, and considers their implications for mental health. Finally there are several chapters reviewing the impact of R/S factors on mental health, with speci fi c attention to clinical practice implications. It is pleasing to see topics receive thoughtful consider-ation which have been relatively neglected in strait-laced academia. Such topics are of widespread interest, notably for example Fenwick and Mosquiero ’ s discussion of end-of-life experiences. Attention is given to the three very rapidly-growing prodigies, positive psychol-ogy (Hauck & Cloninger), spiritual struggles (Pargament & Exline) and central to this book – spiritually integrated psychotherapy (Costa & Rosmarin). an eye on culture, which is argued to be in need of careful more nuanced understanding as a source of variation in mental health.