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Chapter 3 - Psychosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2022

By
Susan Mitchell  and
Glenn Roberts
Edited by
Christopher C. H. Cook  and
Andrew Powell
Christopher C. H. Cook
Affiliation:
Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University
Andrew Powell
Affiliation:
Formerly Warneford Hospital and University of Oxford
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Summary

Psychosis and spirituality are often accompanied by profound and disorienting difficulties with understanding, meaning and purpose. In this chapter the authors draw on their experience as rehabilitation psychiatrists, and their view of spirituality as an essential and integral aspect of being fully human, to explore key interrelationships between spirituality and psychosis in the service of promoting health and healing. Using examples of lived experience they illustrate ways in which the practical application of spiritual perspectives can be important in enabling recovery – from understanding a person’s experience in the context of their personal, religious and cultural background, to re-visioning practice as person-centred care, and from recognising the needs of individual practitioners to service development and cultivating a culture that values peer support. They argue that there is no special or specific ’spiritual’ therapy, but rather that the conscious embodiment of kind, careful and ethical practice upholds spiritual qualities.

Keywords

lovemeaning and purpose, peer supportperson-centredpsychosisrecoveryspirituality

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Spirituality and Psychiatry , pp. 49 - 70
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

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