Spirituality and Narrative in Psychiatric Practice. Stories of Mind and Soul

Description

For mental health service users, spirituality and faith are closely connected with questions of relationship, transcendence, and finding meaning and purpose in life – questions best approached by way of narrative (or story).

In clinical practice, narrative can provide a means of exploring the ethical and professional dilemmas that are encountered when spiritual and/or religious concerns are in evidence. Narrative has been recognised as important in both medicine and theology, and now it can be employed as a framework for addressing spirituality and religion in clinical psychiatric practice, encompassing addictions, liaison and forensic psychiatry, and spanning all ages and cultures.

• Breaks new ground in using a narrative to explore the importance and challenge of spirituality in clinical psychiatric practice.
• Includes narrative excerpts and case illustrations to show how spiritual concerns can be included in a range of psychiatric treatment options.
• Provides a tool for exploring the ethical and professional dilemmas spirituality still raises in mental healthcare.
• Presents contributions from patients, chaplains, and leading psychiatrists and clinical psychologists.

Readership:
All psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Plus of interest to anyone interested in the effect of religion/spirituality upon mental health, e.g. hospital chaplains.

Contents

Foreword
Preface

1. Narrative in Psychiatry, Theology & Spirituality
2. Spirituality and Transcultural Narratives
3. Psychopathology and the Clinical Story
4. Helping patients tell their story: Narratives of body, mind and soul
5. Gods Lost and Found: Spiritual Coping in Clinical Practice
6. Stories of joy and sorrow: spirituality and affective disorder
7. Stories of fear: spirituality and anxiety disorders
8. Stories of Transgression: Narrative therapy with offenders
9. Narratives of Transformation in Psychosis
10. My Story: a spiritual narrative
11. God’s story revealed in the human story
12. Meaning without ‘Believing’: Attachment Theory, Mentalisation and the Spiritual Dimension of Analytical Psychotherapy
13. Stories of Living with Loss: Spirituality and Ageing
14. Beginnings and Endings

Authors

Professor Christopher C.H. Cook - Professor of Spirituality, Theology & Health, Durham University; Honorary Minor Canon at Durham Cathedral; and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Tees, Esk & Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Andrew Powell - Formerly: Consultant Psychotherapist and Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry, St. George's Hospital and University of London and Consultant Psychotherapist and Honorary Senior Lecturer, the Warneford Hospital and University of Oxford.

Professor Andrew Sims - Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Leeds and former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1990-93).