Role of Spirituality in the Mental Health

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The paper strives to elucidate the complex yet intimate relation between spirituality and mental health from contemporary perspectives. The diverse and constantly evolving views that spiritualists and mental health professionals have held toward each other over last century are discussed with special accent on the transpersonal spiritual framework within psychology. The role of spirituality in promoting mental health and alleviating mental illness is highlighted. The paper is concluded with an increasing need to integrate spirituality within the mental health field albeit there are several impediments in achieving the same, which need to be worked through circumspectly. Even though spirituality is different from religion it is often confused with the same. In fact, the historical negativism toward spirituality emanated from it being considered synonymous with religion. To put it succinctly, a person may be both religious and spiritual, or he may be religious and not spiritual, or he may be spiritual but not religious. Spirituality is more concerned with direct experience of latent higher consciousness within oneself, i.e., the internal space, whereas religion is an institutionalized set of beliefs, practices, and guidelines that an individual adopts and follows. Many spiritual movements arose as a rebellion against dominant religions of their times, for instance Buddhism and Jainism from Hinduism, Sufism as a critique against orthodox Islam. Historically, every religion has had its basis in direct spiritual experience of a spiritual master and only later after his teachings were consolidated and formulated in the form of a doctrine that people started following.