Christopher C. H. Cook, Isabelle Hamley & John Swinton (2023) Struggling with God: Mental Health and Christian Spirituality

In attempting to manage and cope with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, varying health strategies were implemented by governments worldwide. The South African government passed legislation implementing a lockdown in the country which included a prohibition of the sale and transportation of alcohol and cigarettes. In this contribution, the impact of this legislation on the mental health of those in addiction and those in recovery was explored. Against the backdrop of the global political climate of COVID-19, factors influencing the concepts of health and healing were questioned. National online recovery groups were identified as interventions aimed at promoting a sense of community in the face of social isolation and social distancing. The integration of shared ideas between Christian theology and positive psychology relating to the concept of self-control was explored. Building forth on, ‘The interface of religion, spirituality and mental health in a South African context: Naming the unnamed conflict’ attitudes of collaboration between the two worlds of psychology and pastoral ministry included, amongst others, humility, integrity, honesty and teachableness. These attitudes were linked to underlying spiritual pillars of recovery evident in the Christian-based online recovery groups of Project Exodus. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: These online recovery groups provided an example of an interdisciplinary approach to healing where psychology and Christian spirituality, as represented by mental health professionals, pastors and others in community, collaborated and encouraged the taking of personal responsibility, and supported the collective love, compassion and care towards those struggling with addiction, and those in recovery during the COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa.

Religion and Spirituality as Protective Factors for the Mental Health of the Students at the Faculty of Reformed Theology and Music. This study focuses on certain aspects of spiritual well-being and examines how religiosity and spirituality can serve as protective factors in maintaining mental health and function as coping mechanisms. After a (non-exhaustive) review of the relevant literature on this subject, we present some practices and reflections used during group activities with the students of the Faculty of Reformed Theology at Cluj-Napoca. Ideally, the work of a religion teacher also has spiritual dimensions. It is important that the training includes reflections on religious, Christian spirituality. Reflecting on spirituality serves a dual purpose: on the one hand, it helps students view their spirituality as a resource for the protection of their mental health, and, on the other hand, it helps them recognize that the awareness and development of religious spirituality is also their professional duty, as it has a direct impact on the students entrusted to them. During groupwork with the future religion teachers, our primary focus was on clarifying and deepening their awareness of spiritual capabilities and reflecting on key concepts of religious spirituality (such as prayer and the image of God), which can serve as resources in protecting their mental and spiritual health.

Acknowledgements Author Biographies Introduction Part I: History, Philosophy and Development of Caribbean Healing Traditions 1. The History, Philosophy and Transformation of Caribbean Healing Traditions Patsy Sutherland 2. The Evolution of Caribbean Traditional Healing Practices Wendy Y. Crawford-Daniel and Jicinta M. Alexis 3. Caribbean Traditional Medicine: Legacy from the Past, Hope for the Future Arvilla Jackson 4. Herbal Medicine Practices in the Caribbean Yuri Clement Part II: Caribbean Traditional Healing and Healers 5. Obeah: Afro-Caribbean Religious Medicine Art and Healing Nathaniel Samuel Murrell 6. Vodou Healing and Psychotherapy Ghislene Meance 7. Sango Healers and Healing in the Caribbean Stephen D. Glazier 8. La Regla De Ocha (Santeria): Afro-Cuban Healing Methods in Cuba and the Diaspora Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar 9. Puerto Rican Spiritism (Espiritismo): Social Context, Healing Process and Mental Health Jesus Soto Espinosa and Joan D. Koss-Chioino 10. Revival: An Indigenous Religion and Spiritual Healing Practice in Jamaica William Wedenoja and Claudette Anderson 11. Spiritual Baptists in the Caribbean Wallace W. Zane Part III: Spirituality, Religion and Cultural Healing 12. Christian Spirituality, Religion and Healing in the Caribbean E. Anthony Allen and Abrahim H. Khan 13. RastafarI: Cultural Healing in the Caribbean Kai A. D. Morgan 14. Hindu Healing Traditions in the Southern Caribbean: History and Praxis Keith E. McNeal, Kumar Mahabir, and Paul Younger 15. Islamic Influence in the Caribbean: Traditional and Cultural Healing Practice Abrahim H. Khan Part IV: Traditional Healing and Conventional Health and Mental Health 16. Community Mental Health in the English-speaking Caribbean Gerard Hutchinson 17. Psychology, Spirituality and Well-Being in the Caribbean Omowale Amuleru-Marshall, Angela Gomez and Kristyn Neckles 18. Practical Magic in the US Urban Milieu: Botanicas and the Informal Networks of Healing Anahi Viladrich 19. Caribbean Traditional Healing and the Diaspora Roy Moodley and Michel'e Bertrand Glossary Index

This project is a qualitative study of the mental health perceptions and practices of one Aboriginal community in the northern Ontario James and Hudson Bay region. Despite a shared history of trauma and oppression with the other five Cree communities in this area, as well as an added trauma of natural disaster and subsequent relocation, this community has been reported to have markedly lower rates of mental health services utilization and suicide. Interviews with eight community leaders and mental health services providers were conducted and analyzed in order to identify the features that distinguish this community. In line with recent recommendations for culturally sensitive and community-compatible research methods, participants’ narratives were organized in terms of the “medicine wheel” of traditional healing. Results showed strong connection to the land and traditions, openness to both traditional and Christian spirituality, community engagement, and shared parenting as strengths valued by a majority of participants.

This issue of Health and Social Care Chaplaincy (HSCC) carries a broad range of topics. These topics include: the exploration of cognitive science in religion-informed spiritual care, the role of chaplaincy in an interprofessional neuropalliative outpatient team, a taxonomic approach for introducing spiritual care in healthcare settings, a peer-to-peer staff listening service for acute contexts, the indirect effects of prayer on stress and life satisfaction for participants in Alcoholics Anonymous and finally the moral reorientations of healthcare chaplains during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are also several book reviews discussing LGBTQIA inclusive hospice spiritual care, mental health and Christian spirituality, and finally, creating a sacred space for story, reflection and practice in healthcare chaplaincy. The subject matter experts of these diverse topics come from numerous countries, namely, England, Ireland, Germany, Estonia, Netherlands, Poland and the United States. The editorial concludes by noting information about the inaugural Australian and New Zealand Moral Injury Conference (ANZMIC 2026).

Reviewed by: Teilhard's Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution by Kathleen Duffy Andrew Del Rossi Teilhard's Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution. By Kathleen Duffy, SSJ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2019. 176 pp. $20.00. In Teilhard's Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution, author Kathleen Duffy explores a new dimension of the person of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit priest and paleontologist who produced a synthesis of science and religion. By focusing on how Teilhard dealt with struggle throughout his life, Duffy demonstrates the power of Teilhard's spirituality while also conveying the relevance and importance of his work in the world today. Having diligently combed through Teilhard's letters and biographies, the author examines each of Teilhard's major life [End Page 96] challenges. She stresses that while Teilhard faced struggle and impasse throughout his life—with his physical and mental health, in his personal and professional relationships, with the church, and with the nagging ban on publishing—he sought to engage these challenges in ways that were unitive rather than divisive. Evolution was the foundational paradigm by which Teilhard understood the world; it taught him that growth requires struggle. Looking to Teilhard's creative approach for guidance, Duffy emphasizes the necessity of each person's participation in evolution's work by prayerfully, actively, and intentionally engaging the struggles of the world today. Duffy begins by revisiting Teilhard's 1919 essay, "The Spiritual Power of Matter" in which he encounters Matter, personified. In this mystical experience, he tells of an encounter with the Divine through matter. From this encounter, Teilhard understood that the journey to God and cosmic evolution were paths to wholeness that require struggle, for evolution's work is tireless and presses on despite the odds against it. What follows is an intimate look into Teilhard's engagement with struggle throughout the course of his life as a person, scientist, mystic, and friend. The author's style is particularly creative, as she overlaps details from Teilhard's story in the different chapters about various dimensions of his person, life, and work. She goes on to unpack his experiences as a believer and as a Jesuit who remained faithful to the church and to the world, despite the ways these relationships perpetually challenged him. Finally, Duffy produces her analysis of Teilhard's approach by breaking down his interior response to struggle while also incorporating his strategies from other experiences of impasse in his life. Beyond being an example of top-level scholarship, the author's work is thoughtful and pertinent on a personal and social level, for it wrestles with a difficult yet universal topic. Duffy offers readers a tangible method for dealing with struggle, derived from Teilhard's lived example of persistence and faithfulness to his inner vision. Her time, energy, and intentionality are present within every page. She demonstrates a [End Page 97] personal commitment not only to the work but more so to the prophetic message of Teilhard to cultivate greater consciousness of the divine in the world. In sharing her unique perspective as a molecular-physicist, the author articulates a perspective on Teilhard that is intricate, yet understandable and relatable. Duffy does not credit the exceptional poetic justice with which her writing evokes and animates the emotion and natural drama of Teilhard's journey, all the while maintaining her own unique voice. Teilhard's Struggle is an essential piece within the canon of Teilhardian literature, as well as within associated topics of the New Cosmology, Nouvelle théologie, and Christian spirituality. Duffy presents a systematic, professional, and pastoral approach to the life and work of Teilhard that is appropriate for undergraduates and graduate students because it addresses a ubiquitous topic that takes various forms of experience and understanding within each stage of life and growth. Likewise, the author's newest work belongs in the hands of every true scholar and fan of Teilhard alike, as it provides a living, breathing portrayal of a human being who yearned ceaselessly to participate in a greater reality. Teilhard's Struggle speaks to the heart of all those who desire to embrace evolution's work, endure the flames of struggle, and in that...

Intervention, as individual help for people at risk of crisis, is the first step of formal and/or informal actions towards members of an alcoholic family. The effectiveness of the intervention is influenced by many factors, among which an im portant place is played by psychological support leading to the restoration of a person’s well-being. The World Health Organization, in its original understanding of well-being, understood as a person’s sense of happiness, well-being and satisfaction with their state of life, distinguished three of its components: somatic, mental and social health. Recently, there has been an increasing number of studies pointing to the value of the spiritual component in activities that rebuild the mental condition of people and families in crisis. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the usefulness of spirituality for the general assumptions of the idea of crisis intervention, addressed directly to family members affected by alcohol problems, meeting the criteria of a family in crisis, and to indicate specific proposals derived from Christian spirituality that can be used during the intervention.

Universal Medicine Associated with Improved Physical and Mental Health in Women: Results from a Regression Analysis of a Cross-Sectional Survey

What future for the Therapeutic Community in the field of addiction? A view from Europe

The Art of Hearing God:Absorption, Dissociation, and Contemporary American Spirituality T. M. Luhrmann (bio) In an essay surveying the use of the term "spirituality," Sandra Schneiders writes that most scholars of religion these days use the term in an "anthropological sense," by which she means that "there is a growing consensus that Christian spirituality is a subset of a broader category that is neither confined to nor defined by Christianity nor even by religion."1 I write here as an anthropologist (my primary fields are psychiatry and religion), conscious that as I enter a conversation with scholars of Christian spirituality, there are thickets of learning which separate us and which neither of us can entirely see. I come to the table with an intellectual style and method out of the social sciences; scholars of spirituality bring centuries of engagement in debates I do not know. Yet I would like to hold the conversation, because I believe that I am puzzling over one of those features of spirituality not confined to Christianity nor even to religion, and I think that this feature may shed light on the way that many American Christians experience God—and I would like to hear how scholars of spirituality respond to what I have to say. The puzzle begins with the shifts in the way certain psychiatric disorders are recognized over time. A humanistic skeptic might say: "But of course, definitions of psychiatric disorder always are changing, such vague categories inevitably shift their forms with the changing discourse of their times." In fact, that skeptical view is already well-entrenched in this case. The disorders which concern me are the ones called dissociative disorders, and what I find puzzling is that they disappear in America in the early decades of the twentieth century and reappear in that century's last few decades. There are already articulate (and often humanist) critics who suggest that the disorders are imagined by highly suggestible individuals whose complaints reveal more about their society than about their bodies.2 For them, the appearance and disappearance of the disorders is a cultural epiphenomenon which accompanies real social issues about the changing role of women in society. They write about the way that social metaphors and narratives become embodied in an individual's experience of illness. Much of what they say has the ring of truth. [End Page 133] The clinicians on the other side believe that dissociative disorders have the stark reality of cancer.3 They read what the critics have to say, and they have become more cautious about the specific claims that their patients make. But whereas many of the critics (and perhaps much of their intellectual readership) tend to dismiss the disorders entirely, these clinicians see the misery of their patients face-to-face, and they think that there is a real clinical phenomenon, that something is wrong with these bodies. Like the critics, the clinicians think about shifting social narratives—but for them, the issue becomes why certain symptoms were ignored or misinterpreted at certain times. They think that the gap in diagnosis arose because mid-century clinicians were blinded by the arrogance of psychoanalysts who interpreted incest as fantasy and by the new and capacious diagnosis of schizophrenia, introduced by Eugen Bleuler in 1908.4 They tend to think that the psychiatric symptoms generated out of childhood sexual abuse have always been the same. In this essay I would like to offer another explanation, one that has not occurred (to my knowledge) to either side locked in the debate. I suggest that there is a psychological capacity called absorption, that this capacity is involved in psychiatric dissociative disorder but also in much spiritual experience, that it can be trained and elaborated, and that the cultural interest in the phenomena associated with the fruits of this capacity rises and falls over time. Social narratives, then, are central to my story, but they are central because they dictate when people become more or less interested in training this bodily capacity. The Diagnoses Let me begin with a richer description of these controversial diagnoses. In the last thirty to forty years, mental health professionals have identified patients with an array...

Explores the dynamics and family of origin factors which often lead to the behavior and fears of the avoidant personality, and provides clinical guidelines gleaned from scripture and from six themes in Christian spirituality. Places special stress on the necessity of understanding Jesus' actions and words as sources of insight not only for ethics but for psychological health.

Celtic Christian spirituality has enjoyed renewed interest at the turn of the current millennium. Existing literature focusses on its theology and culture. This study considers its impact on mental health and wellbeing. Celtic spirituality (as henceforth termed) is nowadays led by dispersed modern monastic communities, notably Iona, Corrymeela, Northumbria, St Chad or Aidan and Hilda. Interpretative phenomenological analysis within a wider holistic qualitative analysis identified a unifying theme that participants experience wholeness, integrating knowledge and lived experience. This encompassed five superordinate themes: loving others, connection with community, oneness with creation, being self in the moment and being self through life. Comparison with person-centred theory reveals significant alignment with the formative and actualising tendencies and the core conditions of congruence, empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard (UPR).

기독교 영성과 정신건강의 관계성

Silence before God in the Life and Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas Gabriel Mary Fiore C.S.J. Robert Cardinal Sarah's recent The Power of Silence (2017) identifies the interior silence of the human person before God as a dimension of Christian spirituality urgently in need of renewal. Far from the simple absence of sound or refusal to communicate, a special type of silence is discovered as "the language of God," both fruit of his presence in the soul and a stillness in which the believer hears his Word.1 This essay finds solid footing for a spirituality of silence in the life and teachings of a trusted master. Although Saint Thomas never composed a treatise on the subject, I argue that a rich theology of silence can be gathered from his writings and that this spiritual doctrine in turn enlightens the silence that enveloped Aquinas's last days on earth. Interpreting the Final Silence of Saint Thomas It is well established that Thomas Aquinas abruptly broke off his theological work and barely spoke during the four months before his death in March 1274.2 However, the significance of this final chapter in the life of the saint [End Page 1] is still debated today. While some scholars see in Thomas's final silence little more than the collapse of his physical and mental health, others view it as an eloquent testament to his mysticism. Consequently, admirers of the saint are left to wonder whether anything of real value can be learned from this final moment of Aquinas's life. What exactly brought about this silence, according to the available historical witnesses? Already, during the last year of Thomas's life, graces of ecstasy and tears during Compline3 and Holy Mass seem to have become frequent.4 Brother Reginald, the saint's closest friend and faithful secretary, explained to Thomas's sister Theodora that he had "frequently experienced raptures of spirit when immersed in contemplation, but never for so long a time."5 Those close to Thomas described these sorts of "abstractions" as frequent, and they seem to have increased during his last months.6 Still, the final silence of Thomas was no such passing grace or abstraction. On December 6, 1273,7 during the celebration of Holy Mass, something happened to Friar Thomas which impressed him so deeply that, from that day to his death, he spoke very little and ceased all formal teaching and writing.8 Bartholomew of Capua's famous testimony states that, [End Page 2] while Thomas celebrated the Eucharist in the chapel of Saint Nicholas, he "underwent an astonishing transformation," and "after this Mass he never wrote nor dictated anything, and hung up his writing materials while in the middle of the third part of his Summa on the treatise of Penitence."9 Perplexed, Reginald urged his master to continue his theological writing: "Father, how can you abandon a work so important for the glory of God and for the enlightenment of the world?" Thomas answered tersely, "Reginald, I can't do it." Aquinas's final word on the matter, while discreet, casts a mystical light on his decision: "I can't do it. Everything I have written seems but straw to me compared to what I have seen and has been revealed to me."10 This testimony, generally accepted as credible, connects the loss of Aquinas's ability or motivation to pursue theological work with some supernatural experience. Thus, the historical record already provides three arguments in favor of a voluntary and supernatural sense to Thomas's silence. One, the witness of Aquinas's spiritual life: graces of ecstasy were frequent during the last year of his life. Two, Aquinas's health: though clearly fatigued, Thomas was by no means incapable of speech or thought. He communicated with his care givers, composed a short theological treatise upon request, and is said to have uttered a fervent prayer as he received the Viaticum.11 Three, Aquinas's own reported words explain his choice to stop preaching and teaching as motivated by some private revelation. Understandably, this mysterious event has fascinated scholars. I group their various opinions into three main positions. Mystical Admirers of...

From the book cover, “Philip Sheldrake is Senior Research Fellow at the Cambridge Theological Federation, UK, regularly a visiting professor in the United States of America, and a former president ...