Mental illness, personhood, and transcendence: Spiritual and religious assistance in Catholic psychiatric contexts

2021 ◽  
pp. 136346152110596
Author(s):  
Tiago Pires Marques

In recent decades, there have been many calls for the inclusion of spirituality and religion (S/R) in therapeutic contexts. In some contexts, this has been an institutionalized form of spiritual and religious assistance (SRA). This article examines the concepts and practices involved in SRA services at three psychiatric institutions in Portugal, a country with strong Catholic roots but increasing efforts at secularity and recognition of religious diversity. The case of a user who contacted the SRA service allows us to better grasp this new practice in action. Although some SRA practices have similarities with mindfulness, a systematic comparison allows us to explore the links between SRA and the global dynamics related to S/R in mental health and the particularities of Catholic spirituality. In the contexts observed, the transition from the Catholic hospital chaplaincy system to the SRA model is developing through the integration of features of the Catholic spiritual tradition with concepts and practices drawn from the psychology of religious experience. The accompaniment of the ‘whole person’ emerges as the central concept of this form of SRA. Spirituality gains significance as an integrative approach to the subjectivity fragmented by the illness and the fragmentation of care across multiple clinical specialties. Furthermore, the prioritization of the spiritual needs expressed by users suggests that SRA combines well with the individualistic rationales and the technification of care in the field of mental health.

Author(s):  
Beverley Raphael ◽  
Sally Wooding ◽  
Julie Dunsmore

Bereavement is the complex set reactions that occurs with the death of a loved one: the emotions of grief with yearning, angry protest, and sadness; the cognitive processes of understanding and making meaning of the finality and nature of death; and the social, cultural, spiritual, and religious contexts of adaptation. Grief may also result from other losses such as health, home, country, and safe worlds. There have been investigations into potential neurobiological substrates, without, as yet consensus about the explanatory model. This chapter covers the phenomenology of ‘normal grief’, neurobiology of bereavement, risk and protective factors influencing course and outcome, physical and mental health consequences of bereavement, and assessment and management. Counselling bereaved people requires hopeful, compassionate psychotherapeutic intervention which recognizes the human suffering involved, validates the person’s strengths, and respects their spiritual needs. Loss is a central issue for all of us, both our fears of it, and its reality. Counselling requires those involved to recognize their own sensitivities in this regard, and to assist the ‘journey’ of those affected in dealing with their loss. Most people grieve, remember with love those whom they have lost, and continue to love, and love anew.


2014 ◽  
pp. 257-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merrie J. Kaas ◽  
Gisli Kristofersson ◽  
Sue Towey

Integrative mental health nursing is founded on the principles of whole person, relationship-based care provided within the personal, lived context, and the use of the best range of evidence-informed interventions to support the individual’s mental health and healing. Using a case study, this chapter describes the integrative mental health nursing approach for the holistic assessment of mood and the collaborative approaches developed by the psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner and client to reduce her mood symptoms and promote mental health.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kari Eldal ◽  
Eli Natvik ◽  
Marius Veseth ◽  
Larry Davidson ◽  
Åse Skjølberg ◽  
...  

2005 ◽  
Vol 39 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 989-994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrel P Doessel ◽  
Roman W Scheurer ◽  
David C Chant ◽  
Harvey A Whiteford

Objective: To determine the role of the National Mental Health Strategy in the deinstitutionalization of patients in psychiatric hospitals in Queensland. Method: Regression analysis (using themaximumlikelihood method) has been applied to relevant time-series datasets on public psychiatric institutions in Queensland. In particular, data on both patients and admissions per 10 000 population are analysed in detail from 1953–54 to the present, although data are presented from 1883–84. Results: These Queensland data indicate that deinstitutionalization was a continuing process from the 1950s to the present. However, it is clear that the experience varied from period to period. For example, the fastest change (in both patients and admissions) took place in the period 1953–54 to 1973–74, followed by the period 1974–75 to 1984–85. Conclusions: In large part, the two policies associated with deinstitutionalization, namely a discharge policy (‘opening the back door’) and an admission policy (‘closing the front door’) had been implemented before the advent of the National Mental Health Strategy in January 1993. Deinstitutionalization was most rapid in the 30-year period to the early 1980s: the process continued in the 1990s, but at amuch slower rate. Deinstitutionalization was, in large part, over before the Strategy was developed and implemented.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martyn Pickersgill

ArgumentResearch into the biological markers of pathology has long been a feature of British psychiatry. Such somatic indicators and associated features of mental disorder often intertwine with discourse on psychological and behavioral correlates and causes of mental ill-health. Disorders of sociality – particularly psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder – are important instances where the search for markers of pathology has a long history; research in this area has played an important role in shaping how mental health professionals understand the conditions. Here, I characterize the multiplicity of psychiatric praxis that has sought to define the mark of antisociality as a form of “ontological anarchy.” I regard this as an essential feature of the search for biological and other markers of an unstable referent, positing that uncertainties endure – in part – precisely because of attempts to build consensus regarding the ontology of antisociality through biomedical means. Such an account is suggestive of the co-production of biomarkers, mental disorder, and psychiatric institutions.


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