Handbook of Spirituality and Worldview in Clinical Practice

Drs. Josephson and Peteet bring clarity to a very rarely discussed topic: worldviews are the unacknowledged elephants in the consulting room, silently in the background, shaping every clinical encounter. Elizabeth S. Bowman, M.D., S.T.M., Private Practice Psychiatrist and Clinical Professor, Department of Neurology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana This volume is a superb resource for teaching residents and student therapists about religion, spirituality, and cultural sensitivity. Residents will love it for its case examples and concise practical advice on approaching religious and worldview issues in treatment. This volume is a treasure for residency training directors. I highly recommend it as a resource for psychiatry residency courses on culture and religion. Elizabeth S. Bowman, M.D., S.T.M., Private Practice Psychiatrist and Clinical Professor, Department of Neurology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana Everyone, including patient and clinician, has a worldview, a philosophy of life, which affects the clinical encounter. This book provides a thoughtful and practical approach for clinicians and trainees to enhance the therapeutic alliance and understand transference-countertransference issues which arise when therapists and clinicians have either the same or different worldviews. In our increasingly multicultural society, this book is an essential roadmap for incorporating worldview and spirituality into our assessment and treatment planning, which will improve our quality of care. Francis G. Lu, M.D., Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco, Department of Psychiatry, San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, California Psychiatrists have long needed a bridge that could connect their worlds of psychobiology and psychotherapy traditions with the spiritualities, religions, and political ideologies that ground the lives of so many of their patients. Handbook of Spirituality and Worldview in Clinical Practice helps clinicians move from the known to the unknown, from the familiar language of psychodynamic constructs and DSM-IV disorders to patients' religious beliefs and spiritual practices that can also promote therapeutic change. Its chapters provide guidance for assessing a patient's spirituality, as well as tutorials on the specific beliefs for Catholic and Protestant Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and atheists and agnostics. James L. Griffith, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, The George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C. With remarkable even-handedness, this handbook explains the clinical challenges presented by groups as diverse as Catholics, Buddhists and atheists. This volume's widely diverse contributors provide the best brief, basic explanations yet available of the worldviews of major religions. Its comprehensive, concise, and easily readable summaries of religions are fascinating and illuminating. Even experts can learn something here. Elizabeth S. Bowman, M.D., S.T.M., Private Practice Psychiatrist and Clinical Professor, Department of Neurology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana Extremely clinically practical: Case vignettes bring these issues alive and propose practical solutions. The beauty of this book is practical advice on clinical management coupled with sophisticated and accurate information on religions and worldviews. Elizabeth S. Bowman, M.D., S.T.M., Private Practice Psychiatrist and Clinical Professor, Department of Neurology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana Clinical assessment of the patient's worldview is not for the careless or unprepared. In addition to humility, those who venture into the delicate and daunting forest of the patient's spiritual life need a guide. Josephson, Peteet, and their colleagues have provided such a guide in this finely balanced and clinically rich treatment. Leigh C. Bishop, M.D., M.A., Menninger Department of Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine and Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Houston, Texas

This clearly written volume focuses on the cognitive aspects of belief—and how personal worldview affects the behavior of both patient and clinician. Informative case vignettes and discussions illustrate how assessment, formulation, and treatment principles can be applied within the different faith traditions.

This refreshing new work is a practical overview of religious and spiritual issues in psychiatric assessment and treatment. Eleven distinguished contributors assert that everyone has a worldview and that these religious and spiritual variables can be collaborative partners of science, bringing critical insight to assessment and healing to treatment.

Unlike other works in this field, which focus primarily on spiritual experience, this clearly written volume focuses on the cognitive aspects of belief—and how personal worldview affects the behavior of both patient and clinician. Informative case vignettes and discussions illustrate how assessment, formulation, and treatment principles can be incorporated within different worldviews, including practical clinical information on major faith traditions and on atheist and agnostic worldviews.

The book's four main sections give concise yet comprehensive coverage of varying aspects of worldview:

• Conceptual Foundation—The Introduction explains the significance of worldview and its context in the development of psychiatry; reviews misunderstandings about spirituality and worldview and how they can be resolved in contemporary practice; and discusses Freud's significant influence on psychiatry's approach to religion and spirituality.
• Clinical Foundations—Three chapters review how clinicians can integrate spiritual and religious perspectives in the basic clinical processes of assessment (gathering a religious or spiritual history); diagnosis and case formulation (including religious and spiritual factors); and treatment (including a review of ethical issues).
• Patients and Their Traditions—Six chapters discuss Catholic and Protestant Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and secularists (atheists and agnostics), including a brief history, clinical implications of core beliefs, and variations of therapeutic encounters (both where patient and clinician share the same faith and where they do not) for each faith tradition.
• Worldview and Culture—A concluding chapter reviews issues of a global culture where faiths once rarely encountered in North America are increasingly seen in clinical practice.

This well-organized text sheds much-needed light on an area too often obscure to many clinicians, fostering a balanced integration of religion and spirituality in mental health training and practice. Bridging several disciplines in a...read more...