Religion, Culture and Mental Health
A synthesis of two decades of research, framed around the questions that drive the field. Are practices like seeing visions or speaking in tongues good or bad for mental health? Do some cultures voice distress through the body for want of the words to voice it otherwise? Do some religions foster clinically obsessional behaviour, and are religious people in fact happier? It works through schizophrenia, mania, depression, anxiety, somatisation and dissociation, alongside positive states of mind, weighing the religious and cultural influences on each. For researchers, clinicians and students.