Book Reviews

Kate Loewenthal’s new book, Religion, culture and mental health, is a welcomed work combining characteristics of both a textbook on religion and mental health and a monograph on the way culture may interfere on the relation between religion and mental health. Through seven elegantly written chapters, six of which cover psychopathology and one positive psychology, Loewenthal reviews the recent empirical evidence showing how key dimensions of mental health are affected by religious and cultural beliefs, practices, and membership. Interestingly, historical evidence is not completely absent; it allows one, in several cases, to contextualize or confirm the evidence from contemporary research. In comparison with the previous well-known handbooks, i.e., Handbook of religion and mental health (edited by Koenig, 1998) and Handbook of religion and health (edited by Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2000), both remarkable for their inclusiveness of a large number of studies and topics, Loewenthal’s book has a more specific (monograph) and less broad (textbook) scope, and in doing so has several advantages. First, the author goes beyond surface reviews of the empirical literature on religion and specific components of mental health that sometimes result in concluding just on whether the associations between the above are positive or negative and on which are the mediating processes. She selectively focuses on key dimensions of mental illness (schizophrenia, manic disorder, depression, anxiety, somatization, and dissociation) and each time develops ideas on what may be the psychological and clinical relevance of religion for each specific disorder. This makes the book much more interesting for readers with clinical, cultural, and psychological religious interests. The book is also enriched with many clinical vignettes and case examples that are stimulating and illustrate well the author’s ideas and key features of research. Second, probably for the first time, some disorders receive (within an overview book) a sustained examination with unique corresponding chapters. This is the case with manic disorder, dissociation, and somatization, all three highly important to understand affinities of psychopathology with and distinctions from religious and cultural beliefs and practices; and the chapter on schizophrenia is particularly rich and integrative of many research questions, such as the possible distinctions to be made between schizophrenia on the one hand, and visions, voices, delusions, and possessions in a religious context, on the other hand. Third, throughout the different chapters, a reader with an international perspective is happy to see not only studies and research from North American samples and sources (journals) but also studies and research from a variety of religious groups, cultures, and countries, including the author’s own ones, and especially an impressive number of studies published during the last 10 years in Mental Health, Religion and Culture (a journal co-edited by Kate Loewenthal, together with S. Dein, C.A. Lewis, and K.I. Pargament). Indirectly, Loewenthal’s book shows how the many various studies published in Mental Health, Religion and Culture not only cover a large variety of topics, populations, and