Contemplative and Non-Verbal Therapeutic Approaches in Community Mental Health: Transcultural Perspectives and Implementation in Underserved Settings

In community mental health, there is growing recognition that verbal psychotherapy alone cannot reach everyone. People with limited access to formal care, children exposed to violence, trauma survivors, individuals with severe mental illness, migrants and refugees, and communities in low-resource settings often respond better to approaches that work through the body, the senses, or symbolic expression. At the same time, contemplative practices such as mindfulness, compassion-based training, and body awareness have expanded considerably over the past two decades, both in clinical research and in community programs around the world.However, a significant gap remains in our understanding of how these approaches operate across different cultural landscapes. Most studies originate from high-income, Western contexts, overlooking the rich transcultural dimensions of mental health. Culturally situated, traditional contemplative practices and indigenous knowledge systems are increasingly being integrated within community and public mental health services, yet they are rarely studied in conversation with mainstream clinical psychology.This Research Topic brings together researchers working across clinical psychology, psychotherapy, contemplative science, trauma studies, psychosocial rehabilitation, and cultural psychiatry. The shared focus is on contemplative and non-verbal therapeutic approaches as they are actually practiced and studied in community settings, with particular attention to underserved populations, transcultural settings, and the challenges of implementing these approaches in public and low-resource mental health systems worldwide, particularly in regions such as Latin America and Asia.Rather than examining contemplative practice as such — its phenomenology, neural correlates, or mechanisms in controlled laboratory settings — this collection focuses on how contemplative and non-verbal approaches are delivered, adapted, and evaluated within community and public mental health systems. The collection seeks contributions that examine how these interventions work and for whom in real-world conditions, how they can be adapted or are traditionally situated within different cultural and socioeconomic contexts, and what methodological approaches are best suited to studying processes that are, by nature, difficult to put into words.We welcome empirical studies using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods designs, as well as theoretical papers, systematic and scoping reviews, clinical case studies, and reflective pieces on practice, training, or policy.Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:- Mindfulness- and compassion-based interventions in community mental health settings- Expressive and arts-based therapies (sandwork, music, art, drama, movement) and their clinical applications- Body-oriented and somatic approaches in trauma-informed care- Non-verbal therapeutic processes with children, adolescents, and populations exposed to violence- Culturally situated, traditional contemplative practices and indigenous knowledge systems integrated within community and public mental health services- Transcultural perspectives and applications in underserved regions, with a focus on Latin America and Asia- Contemplative approaches in psychosocial rehabilitation and severe mental illness- Processes and outcomes of non-verbal and contemplative interventions as observed in community and real-world settings- Methodological innovations for researching embodied and non-verbal therapeutic processes- Implementation, task-sharing, and delivery of contemplative and culturally adapted interventions in low- and middle-income contexts- Training, supervision, and clinician well-being in contemplative practice- Ethical and cross-cultural reflections on integrating contemplative approaches into mental health systems Topic editors: Mikyung Jang, Pedro Henrique Habimorad Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84993/contemplative-and-non-verbal-therapeutic-approaches-in-community-mental-health-transcultural-perspectives-and-implementation-in-underserved-settings