Religion and psychiatry: research, prayer and clinical practice

Abstract

Religious concerns, manifested in thought and behaviour, have a complex, bidirectional and sometimes conceptually overlapping relationship with mental health and mental disorder. Psychiatry, concerning itself with what is measurable in research, and with the relief of distress in clinical practice, has a different perspective on these complex interrelationships than does theology or religion. That which is transcendent, and therefore not measurable, is often important to patients, and sometimes distress may (theologically) be a sign of human well-being. The giving of careful attention to transcendence and distress may variously be conceived of as prayer, religious coping or clinical care. Applications of research to clinical practice, addressing as they do a sensitive and controversial boundary between psychiatry and religion, must therefore be patient centred and culturally sensitive.