Main description:

This book explores how people draw upon spiritual, religious, or faith-based practices to support their mental wellness amidst forms of chronicity. From diverse global contexts and spiritual perspectives, this volume critically examines several chronic conditions, such as psychosis, diabetes, depression, oppressive forces of colonization and social marginalization, attacks of spirit possession, or other forms of persistent mental duress.

As an inter- and transdisciplinary collection, the chapters include innovative ethnographic observations and over 300 in-depth interviews with care providers and individuals living in chronicity, analyzed primarily from the phenomenological and hermeneutic meaning-making traditions. Overall, this book depicts a modern global era in which spiritualty and religion maintain an important role in many peoples' lives, underscoring a need for increased awareness, intersectoral collaboration, and practical training for varied care providers.

This book will be of interest to scholars of religion and health, the sociology and psychology of religion, medical and psychological anthropology, religious studies, and global health studies, as well as applied health and mental health professionals in psychology, social work, physical and occupational therapy, cultural psychiatry, public health, and medicine.

Contents:

1. Chronicity, mental wellness, and spirituality: An introduction (Kerstin Roger and Andrew R. Hatala); 2. Religiosity and spirituality in mental health contexts: Perceptions of psychologists and chaplains (Marta Helena de Freitas, Evelyn Figueira Lima Ruas and Emmanuel Ifeka Nwora); 3. Responding with Anishinaabek values: Understanding the importance of living as a spiritual being for mental wellness (Leslie McGregor and Gerald Patrick McKinley); 4. Tradition and modernity in Somali experiences of spirit possession: An ethnographic exploration-Aaron Moratz); 5. Politics and aesthetics of care: Chronic affliction and spiritual healing in Brazilian Kardecism (Helmar Kurz); 6. Nourishing exchanges: Care, love, and chronicity in Lourdes (Sarah Goldingay, Paul Dieppe, Sara Warber and Emmylou Rahtz); 7. Miyo-wicehetowin in the city: Indigenous youth spirituality, good ancestors, and mental wellness through healing journeys on the land (Darrien Morton, Kelley Bird-Naytowhow and Andrew Hatala); 8. Psychosis, spiritual crisis, and narrative transformation: An ethnography of spiritual peer-support networks in the United Kingdom (Raphaelle Remy-Fischler); 9. Prayer camps, healing, and the management of chronic mental illness in Ghana: A qualitative phenomenological inquiry (Francis Benyah); 10. "God takes care of it": Spiritual practices and mental wellness of people living with type 2 diabetes in Belize (Lindsay Allen, Lucia Ellis and Andrew Hatala); 11. Cultures of wellness and recovery: Exploring religion and chronicity in relation to severe mental illness (G. Eric Jarvis, Rob Whitley and Marie Nathalie LeBlanc); 12. Global mental wellness and spiritual geographies of care: Concluding remarks (Andrew R. Hatala and Kerstin Roger)