Saúde mental e espiritualidade/religiosidade: A visão de psicólogos

Abstract

Spirituality has been more and more researched in its relations with mental health. The objective of the research is to describe how the psychologists realize in their practices the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and mental health. It is an exploratory study with qualitative approach. The sample has been composed by two groups of professionals of psychology. One group has been formed by all the 5 psychologist of the Public Mental Health Service of São Leopoldo and the other by 5 psychologists of private clinics, selected by the method named "snow ball" by which the first is chosen by convenience and this one indicate the second and so on. The dates have been collected by semi-structured interview and interpreted according the content analysis, identifying three subject matter categories: 1) Mental health as equilibrium and sense of life; 2) Spirituality/religiosity as experience; 3) Clinic as becoming aware of the self and autonomy.