John R. Peteet – författare

In Depression and the Soul, John Peteet proves the old adage that the best physician is also a philosopher. He considers how to approach the problem of depression within a larger context, and reviews current concepts of successful living relative to the heart (emotion and volition), the mind (cognition and coping), and the soul (the self in relation to transcendent reality). Each chapter goes on to further explore the relationship between depression and the context of a patient’s entire life. This is done through consideration of how the existential struggles of depressed individuals engage their spiritual lives, by reviewing current empirical literature on depression and spirituality, comparing the perspectives of various spiritual traditions or world views, and summarizing ways that spirituality and depression interact.

In Depression and the Soul, John Peteet proves the old adage that the best physician is also a philosopher. He considers how to approach the problem of depression within a larger context, and reviews current concepts of successful living relative to the heart (emotion and volition), the mind (cognition and coping), and the soul (the self in relation to transcendent reality). Each chapter goes on to further explore the relationship between depression and the context of a patient’s entire life. This is done through consideration of how the existential struggles of depressed individuals engage their spiritual lives, by reviewing current empirical literature on depression and spirituality, comparing the perspectives of various spiritual traditions or world views, and summarizing ways that spirituality and depression interact.

This refreshing new work is a practical overview of religious and spiritual issues in psychiatric assessment and treatment. Eleven distinguished contributors assert that everyone has a worldview and that these religious and spiritual variables can be collaborative partners of science, bringing critical insight to assessment and healing to treatment.

Unlike other works in this field, which focus primarily on spiritual experience, this clearly written volume focuses on the cognitive aspects of belief -- and how personal worldview affects the behavior of both patient and clinician. Informative case vignettes and discussions illustrate how assessment, formulation, and treatment principles can be incorporated within different worldviews, including practical clinical information on major faith traditions and on atheist and agnostic worldviews.

The book''s four main sections give concise yet comprehensive coverage of varying aspects of worldview: • Conceptual Foundation -- The Introduction explains the significance of worldview and its context in the development of psychiatry; reviews misunderstandings about spirituality and worldview and how they can be resolved in contemporary practice; and discusses Freud''s significant influence on psychiatry''s approach to religion and spirituality.• Clinical Foundations -- Three chapters review how clinicians can integrate spiritual and religious perspectives in the basic clinical processes of assessment (gathering a religious or spiritual history); diagnosis and case formulation (including religious and spiritual factors); and treatment (including a review of ethical issues).• Patients and Their Traditions -- Six chapters discuss Catholic and Protestant Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and secularists (atheists and agnostics), including a brief history, clinical implications of core beliefs, and variations of therapeutic encounters (both where patient and clinician share the same faith and where they do not) for each faith tradition.• Worldview and Culture -- A concluding chapter reviews issues of a global culture where faiths once rarely encountered in North America are increasingly seen in clinical practice.

This well-organized text sheds much-needed light on an area too often obscure to many clinicians, fostering a balanced integration of religion and spirituality in mental health training and practice. Bridging several disciplines in a novel way, this thought-provoking volume will find a diverse audience among mental health care students, educators, and professionals everywhere who seek to better integrate the religious and spiritual aspects of their patients'' lives into assessment and treatment.

Here is the first practical guide for dealing with the moral issues that regularly confront clinicians in their work. Written for all mental health professionals, Doing the Right Thing: An Approach to Moral Issues in Mental Health Treatment offers a framework both for making moral decisions concerning the treatment of patients and for helping patients deal with their own moral concerns.

Drawing on current thinking in several disciplines, Doing the Right Thing introduces the concept of moral functioning as a basis for therapeutic influence. Numerous case examples illustrate how to • Assess patients'' ability to function morally -- Learn how six basic capacities needed for moral functioning develop, and how identifying problems in an individual''s moral functioning can help guide the formulation of a treatment plan.• Treat patients with problems functioning morally -- Appreciate when it is time to set aside neutrality as a therapeutic stance in favor of a more direct approach to helping patients make moral commitments, decisions and self-assessments and develop moral character.• Deal with the moral aspects of clinical decision-making -- Develop a framework for making moral choices in planning the direction of treatment, confronting resistance and addressing problems in caring effectively. • Help patients address moral challenges -- Learn how to take into account your own and the patient''s values in reasoning through moral dilemmas. Understand more clearly how to help patients deal with unfair pain caused by others, as well as the guilt and shame caused by their own moral failures.• Employ the therapeutic potential of moral growth, transformation, and integration -- Discover the role of a clinician in helping demoralized patients reformulate their ideals for better outcomes. Recognize where a moral paradigm is useful in improving the delivery of mental health care.

Concise, clear, and clinically relevant, Doing the Right Thing is a valuable, thought-provoking guide for both new and seasoned mental health practitioners who live and work in a morally complex environment. It is also an excellent supplementary text for courses dealing with the practice of psychotherapy and the ethical aspects of mental health care.

This book aims to help readers appreciate the many-faceted relationship between Christianity, one of the world’s major faith traditions, and the practice of psychiatry. Chapter authors in this book first consider challenges posed by historical antagonisms, church-based mental health stigma, and controversy over phenomena such as hearing voices. Next, others explore both how Christians often experience conditions such as mood and psychotic disorders, disorders in children and adolescents, moral injury and PTSD, and ways that their faith can serve as a resource in their healing. Twelve Step spirituality, originally informed by Christianity, is the subject of a chapter, as are issues raised for Christians by disability, death and dying. A set of chapters then focuses on the state of integration of Christian beliefs and practices into psychotherapy, treatment delivery, educational programming, clergy/clinician collaboration, and treatment by a non-Christian psychiatrist. Finally, thereare chapters by a mental health professional who has been a patient, a Jewish psychiatrist, a Muslim psychiatrist knowledgeable about Christianity and psychiatry in the Muslim majority world, and a Christian psychiatrist.  These chapters provide context, diversity and personal perspectives. 

Christianity and Psychiatry is a valuable resource for mental health professionals seeking to understand and address the particular challenges that arise when caring for Christian patients. 

This book provides a thorough, comprehensive, and accessible reference for all the major Eastern faith traditions and their intersection with psychiatry. Understanding Eastern religion is of paramount value to all mental health professionals, as there is a growing emphasis on religion and spirituality as a part of clinical cultural competence interventions, predominantly in North America and Europe. Additionally, there is rising membership in Eastern, Asian, and non-Semitic faith traditions in North America and Europe. Hence, more patients and clinicians belong to these non-Western faiths than ever before.

The volume is divided into five parts. Part 1 covers general issues, including principles of culture, religion, and spirituality in psychiatry, spirituality across the lifespan, child rearing, practice and faith, and how death and dying is approached in these Eastern traditions. Part 2 covers specific Eastern religions and spiritual traditions, including basic principles and research-based clinical aspects of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, as well as Confucian philosophical ideas. Part 3 attempts to apply the importance of cultural humility to perspectives on the Eastern Traditions from Western Psychiatry. These include Christian, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives, not of expertise, but of explorations in learning. Part 4 covers specific social psychiatric perspectives, including the psychiatric harm that can come from caste divisions and cults posing as religions, but closes with a perspective on the Eastern connections to the relatively unknown, but unifying, Omnist perspective.

All mental health professionals seeking to expand their understanding of the essential belief systems of various Eastern religions and their connection with mental health will find Eastern Religions, Spirituality, and Psychiatry an invaluable resource.