Friday, May 18, 14:00 - 15:30
Kevin Ladd

Mental Disorders, Religion and Spirituality 1990 to 2010: A Systematic Evidence-based Review

Raphael Bonelli

Objective: Religion/spirituality has been increasingly examined in medical research during the past two decades. Despite the increasing number of published studies, a systematic evidence based review of the available data in the field of psychiatry has not been done during the last 20 years.

Method: The literature was searched using Pubmed (1990 –2010). We examined original research on religion, religiosity, spirituality, and related terms published in the top 25% of psychiatry and neurology journals according to the ISI journals citation index 2010. Most studies focused on religion or religiosity, and only 7% involved interventions.

Results: Among the 43 publications that met these criteria, thirty-one (72.1%) found a relationship between level of religious/spiritual involvement and less mental disorder (positive), eight (18.6%) found mixed results (positive and negative), and two (4.7%) reported more mental disorder (negative). All studies on dementia, suicide and stress-related disorders found a positive association, as well as 79% and 67% of the papers on depression and substance abuse, respectively. In contrast, findings from the few studies in schizophrenia were mixed, and in bipolar disorder, indicated no association or a negative one.

Spirituality in Cultural Historical Perspective
Herman Westerink

The emergence of the concept of spirituality in the psychology of religion is closely related to the decreasing importance of traditional religious institutions and religiosity as commitment to traditional contents of belief on the one hand, and the increase of the importance of individual spirituality in (post-)modern, secular societies on the other hand. The concept of spirituality is mostly defined in a broad and even vague way: it indicates a concern with personal life principles and ultimate questions about life’s meaning in relation to the transcendent or (whatever one may consider) the sacred/divine. The apparent vagueness and broadness of the concept of spirituality is related to the different meanings of the concept in different intellectual and religious contexts, and subsequently, to different valuations of spirituality in relation to religion and lived religiosity – spirituality can be associated with what the theologians traditionally identified as fides qua (the mental act of believing), but also with a variety of non-Christian religious practices and experiences (yoga, meditation, etc.) in esotericism and New Age. The concept of spirituality includes and expresses both aspects of traditional faith as well as religion critique and post-religious, secular-existential beliefs, intuitions and practices.

In this paper the ambiguous, polyvalent and multidimensional concept of spirituality is described from a cultural-historic perspective, and related to the emergence and further development of the psychology of religion as scientific discipline. On the one hand, the growing interest in spirituality mirrors the on-going secularization process and the emancipation of the psychology of religion from theological discourse and theological institutions. On the other hand, the psychology of religion is still closely connected to a modern theological project of establishing true and healthy religious/spiritual worldviews in an era of strong decline of church authority and commitment to dogmas and creeds.

Discussion