Handbook of Spirituality and Worldview in Clinical Practice
"Drs. Josephson and Peteet have assembled a collection of essays critical to the practice of psychiatry in a country that is becoming increasingly diverse in spiritual worldviews. Regardless of whether practitioners believe that spirituality plays a role in improving mental health (or aggravating mental illness), few can doubt that practitioners must understand the spiritual context out of which psychiatric symptoms emerge. Some attempts to address this spiritual context (or worldview) reduce spirituality to a construct that can be assessed generically, that is, one size fits all. The authors of these essays, in contrast, speak to the diversity of spiritual worldviews and the need for the psychiatrist to be familiar with this diversity. Though this volume takes a path less traveled, I believe it takes the correct path to achieve the editors' goal--'to understand the place of our own and our patients' worldviews in our clinical work.'"-- "Dan G. Blazer, M.D., Ph.D., JP Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina"