Its aim is to help promote contact and collaboration among the members of our WPA Section, the Dutch Foundation for Psychiatry and Religion, special interst groups like e.g. the Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (SIG), the Brazilian Research Center in Spirituality and Health (NUPES), and mental health professionals throughout the world, regarding Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry. 

Please, help to make this site a valuable tool for connecting, sharing, learning and growing, and integrating, by participation!

Just released!

Exploring the Fronties of the Mind-Brain Relationship

edited by

Aleander Moreira-Almeida & Franklin Santana Santos

>>> read more

New!!

Special Issue Psyche & Faith : 'Psychiatry and Religion'; contibutions by Andrew Sims, James Lomax, Kenneth Pargament, Simon Dein and others! >>> read more

(Dutch Journal Psyche & Geloof)

Coming soon

Proceedings of the International Symposium Psychiatry & Religious Experience 4th to 6th November 2010, Aviala, Spain, in the Actas Espanolas de Psiquiatria (both in Spanish and English)

WPA PUBLICATION:

'This comprehensive and up to date textbook includes a wealth of information from a variety of authors with different vocational and geographical backgrounds' (Mary E. Camp, Curr Opin Psychiatry 24: 512) .

Religion and Psychiatry: Beyond Boundaries. Edited by Peter J. Verhagen, Herman M van Praag, Juan J. López-Ibor, John L. Cox and Driss Moussaoui. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.  

Religion (and spirituality) is very much alive and shapes the cultural values and aspirations of psychiatrist and patient alike, as does the choice of not identifying with a particular faith. Patients bring their beliefs and convictions into the doctor-patient relationship. The challenge for mental health professionals, whatever their own worldview, is to develop and refine their vocabularies such that they truly understand what is communicated to them by their patients. Religion and Psychiatry provides psychiatrists with a framework for this understanding and highlights the importance of religion and spirituality in mental well-being.

This book aims to inform and explain, as well as to be thought provoking and even controversial. Patiently and thoroughly, the authors consider why and how, when and where religion (and spirituality) are at stake in the life of psychiatric patients. The interface between psychiatry and religion is explored at different levels, varying from daily clinical practice to conceptual fieldwork.

What can religious traditions learn from each other to assist the patient? Religion and Psychiatry discusses this, as well as the neurological basis of religious experiences. It describes training programmes that successfully incorporate aspects of religion and demonstrates how different religious and spiritual traditions can be brought together to improve psychiatric training and daily practice.

This is the first time that so many psychia­trists, psychologists and theologians from all parts of the world and from so many differ­ent religious and spiritual backgrounds have worked together to produce a book like this one. In that sense, it truly is a World Psychi­atric Association publication.

(WPA members are entitled to 20% discount: there are details on the WPA website.)