Psychiatry with Spirituality in Mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2026
It is proposed that spirituality and psychiatry, commonly held to be separate concerns, are in fact deeply entangled and inseparable. Meaning-making, an important concern of spirituality, is important to human well-being and needs to be taken more seriously by psychiatry. The damage done by historical antagonisms between psychiatry and religion needs to be undone by affirmation of spiritual concerns within psychiatric practice and by closer partnerships between psychiatry and faith communities. Professional boundaries need to be understood not as protecting psychiatry as secular space (which many religious patients find hostile to their spiritual concerns) but as protecting safe therapeutic space within which psychological recovery and spiritual growth may occur. Psychiatrists need to develop an interest in clinical theology, as a way of understanding the ordinary theological concerns of patients (including their ‘atheologies’). Psychiatry needs to be more spiritually attentive – to shed light on what patients desire spiritually and psychologically – rather than focussing only on the metaphorical shadows of psychopathology. Psychiatry needs to keep spirituality in mind.
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