Spirituality, Religion, and Culture: Implications for Mental Health, Volume II

This Research Topic is conceived as Volume II of the successful "Spirituality and Religion: Implications for Mental Health", while broadening the scope to include a stronger cultural lens, given the important role culture plays in shaping how spirituality, religion, and mental health are understood and experienced across contexts.Scientific research on the relationship between spirituality, religion, culture, and mental health has grown exponentially over the past few decades, resulting in evidence to suggest that religion and spirituality can both positively and negatively impact mental health, shape explanatory models of health and illness, and influence help-seeking behaviors and engagement with healthcare providers. Cultural contexts, values, and traditions also play a central role in how individuals understand suffering, healing, wellbeing, and recovery.Notwithstanding the lack of consensus and undisputed evidence-based data on the relationship between spirituality, religion, culture, and mental health, the available evidence demonstrates the need for increased recognition of the role of spirituality, religion, and cultural worldviews in mental health clinical practice and research. As such, Neurotheology is an exciting new approach that may help bridge our understandings of religion, culture, health, and the overall human condition. Other researchers prefer to use terms like “spiritual neuroscience” or “neuroscience of religion.” It is an emerging field of study that seeks to understand the relationship between brain science, religion, spirituality, and human experience across diverse cultural settings.It has been argued that mental health-care professionals ought to consider discussions around spirituality, religion, and culture, and establish partnerships with spiritual, faith-based, and community organizations to avoid alienating individuals whose belief systems and cultural frameworks are not represented by secular principles. Some professionals have even called for a Bio-Psycho-Social-Spiritual-Cultural Model of mental health to ensure a more holistic approach to treatment.Given the traditional unwillingness of the mental health profession to engage with spirituality and religion, and at times the limited attention given to cultural meaning systems, the relationship between these domains has often been characterized by divisions and mistrust. This Research Topic aims to bridge that divide by initiating conversations and contributing to filling this gap in the literature.An appropriate understanding of the links between the brain, faith, spirituality, and culture has enormous implications for mental health and wellbeing in terms of providing evidence-based information, policy recommendations, healthcare guidelines, and the successful implementation of mental health initiatives.By creating a space to discuss the complexities around the relationship between spirituality, religion, culture, and mental health, the authors wish to add to the evidence-based knowledge in the field and pave the way for the application of some of these ideas to clinical practice.We invite empirical papers (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods), systematic and narrative reviews, and perspectives on the following topics related to spirituality, religion, and culture:• Issues related to spirituality, religion, culture, and therapy / mental health• Bio-medical / ethical issues• Spirituality / religion and neuroscience (e.g., changes in MRIs and CT scans when people meditate or pray) and implications for mental health• Cross-cultural issues in working with spirituality and religion / cultural beliefs towards mental health and treatment modalities• Comparative and intervention empirical studies across cultural and religious contexts• Brain, neuroscience, faith, spirituality, and culture• Death, near-death experience, religion, culture, and mental health Topic editors: Angie Cucchi, Cecilia A Essau Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/74744/spirituality-religion-and-culture-implications-for-mental-health-volume-ii