Welcome, to this site of the WPA Section on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry! This site is the home page of our WPA Section in collaboration with the Dutch Foundation for Psychiatry and Religion.

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 (UK), the Brazilian Research Group in Spirituality and Health (BR), committees like e.g. the APA Corresponding Committee on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry (USA), the Asian Federation of Psychiatric Associations (AFPA), 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!

 

ANNOUNCEMENT    KEEP THE DATE FREE     http://www.pre2010.com

The symposium aims to provide a high-quality, comprehensive overview of all topics related to religious phenomena and psychiatry. Religion is an important component of life, including those suffering from a mental disorder. In the last years there has been an increasing interest in the study of the importance of religious phenomena in those persons suffering from mental illnesses and this symposium will study the relationship between religion, spirituality and psychopathology.

This international and unique symposium is strongly connected with:

A NEW WPA PUBLICATION:

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.  

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.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

International meetings

Spirituality, Theology and Mental Health: Myth, Authority and Healing Power

13-16 September 2010 — Durham, England

Spirituality, Theology & Mental Health: Myth, Authority & Healing Power will begin an ongoing dialogue between theology, anthropology, psychiatry and philosophy, and will be of interest to academics and practitioners (including religious ministers and counsellors) in these areas. It will address issues such as the importance of religion and spirituality in psychiatric treatment of mental illness and the necessity of treating the whole person, and form an ongoing mutually critical engagement between theology and psychiatry. These and related issues will be explored both through academic papers and also through praxis-based workshops such as meditation workshops. read more >>>

 

 

20th World Congress of Social Psychiatry, Marrakech, 23-27 October 2010