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Warren A. Kinghorn

Esther Colliflower Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral and Moral Theology
Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Adult Psychiatry & Psychology
Duke Divinity School, Box 90968, Durham, NC 27708
407 Chapel Drive, Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Wayfaring A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care

Book · July 11, 2024 With gentle guidance and practical suggestions, Wayfaring is an essential resource for pastors and practitioners as well as for Christians who seek mental health care. ... Cite

Protecting Life or Managing Risk? Suicide Prevention and the Lure of Medicalized Control

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · August 1, 2023 Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States and in many other parts of the world. As such, suicide is frequently framed as a medical and public health problem for which solutions are best recommended by medical and public health authorities. W ... Full text Cite

Repairing moral injury takes a team: what clinicians can learn from combat veterans.

Journal Article J Med Ethics · May 2023 Moral injury results from the violation of deeply held moral commitments leading to emotional and existential distress. The phenomenon was initially described by psychologists and psychiatrists associated with the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Aff ... Full text Link to item Cite

Responses to mental health issues among Chinese American Christian communities: report from focus group conversations

Journal Article Mental Health, Religion and Culture · January 1, 2023 Religious and cultural factors play an important part in shaping attitudes about mental health. This study focuses on mental health-related beliefs of a specific ethnocultural population: Chinese American Christians. Using an online adaptation of nominal g ... Full text Cite

Prescribing Together A Relational Guide to Psychopharmacology

Book · June 1, 2021 By focusing on how, rather than what, to prescribe, this book makes room for patients' lived experiences and interpersonal and social contexts, returning to them a sense of agency and empowering them to set meaningful goals and to be active ... ... Cite

Crisis in psychiatric diagnosis? Epistemological humility in the DSM era

Journal Article Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (United Kingdom) · December 1, 2020 The modern editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), beginning with DSM-III in 1980, emerged in response to notable challenges to psychiatry's practices and ways of knowing in the early 1970s. Because these challenges thr ... Full text Cite

Challenging the Hegemony of the Symptom: Reclaiming Context in PTSD and Moral Injury.

Journal Article J Med Philos · November 30, 2020 Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is now constituted by a set of characteristic symptoms, its roots lie in Post-Vietnam Syndrome, a label generated by a Vietnam-era advocacy movement that focused not on symptoms but on war's traumatic context. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Religion and Caregiving for Orphans and Vulnerable Children: A Qualitative Study of Caregivers Across Four Religious Traditions and Five Global Contexts.

Journal Article J Relig Health · June 2020 Studies of caregivers of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) rarely examine the role religion plays in their lives. We conducted qualitative interviews of 69 caregivers in four countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Cambodia, and India (Hyderabad and Nagaland), and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Mental Health and Trauma

Chapter · January 1, 2020 Cite

From obligation to opportunity: future of patient-reported outcome measures at the Veterans Health Administration.

Journal Article Transl Behav Med · November 25, 2019 Patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures are particularly important in mental health services because patients are the central and essential source of information about their mental health status. PRO measures have the potential to engage patients in meanin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Health Care as Vocation? Practicing Faithfully in an Age of Disenchantment

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · November 5, 2019 In his 1917 lecture "Science as a Vocation," Max Weber challenged current and aspiring scholars to abandon any pretense that science (Wissenschaft) bears within itself any meaning. In a disenchanted age, he argued, science could at best offer "knowledge of ... Full text Cite

Putting virtues in context: engaging the VIA classification of character strengths in caregiving for orphans and vulnerable children across cultures

Journal Article Journal of Positive Psychology · November 2, 2019 The VIA Classification of Character Strengths has broken important ground for measuring character strengths across cultures. Because the VIA Classification is a closed system of abstract strengths, however, it is unknown how end-users engage strengths in p ... Full text Open Access Cite

Caring and thriving: An international qualitative study of caregivers of orphaned and vulnerable children and strategies to sustain positive mental health

Journal Article · March 1, 2019 © 2018 Background: Child well-being is associated with caregiver mental health. Research has focused on the absence or presence of mental health problems, such as depression, in caregivers. However, positive mental health – defined as the presence of posit ... Full text Open Access Cite

Meeting Christian voluntarism on its own terms

Journal Article Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology · December 1, 2018 Full text Cite

"As one infirm, I approach the balm of life": Psychiatric medication, agency, and freedom in the psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · October 26, 2018 People often take psychiatric medication in order to obtain both freedom from painful experience and freedom for relationships and vocation. Thomas Aquinas' account of agency and freedom offers resources for using medications wisely. For Aquinas, bodily he ... Full text Cite

Taking our meds faithfully? Christian engagements with psychiatric medication

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · October 26, 2018 One in seven American adults takes medication to alter or to prevent unwanted experience or behavior. But, the prescription and use of psychiatric medication raises practically important theological and ethical questions for practitioners, for clergy, for ... Full text Cite

The politics of virtue: An Aristotelian-Thomistic engagement with the VIA classification of character strengths

Journal Article Journal of Positive Psychology · September 3, 2017 The VIA Classification of Character Strengths is often presented as cross-culturally valid, but this is methodologically and philosophically ungrounded: the VIA Classification rather reflects the particular political and moral commitments of the workgroups ... Full text Cite

Augustine, divine agency, and therapeutic change

Journal Article Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology · September 1, 2017 Full text Cite

Theology and Medicine

Chapter · 2017 Cite

Spirituality, Religion, and Rational Suicide

Chapter · December 15, 2016 This book provides a comprehensive view of rational suicide in the elderly, a group that has nearly twice the rate of suicide when chronically ill than any other demographic. ... Link to item Cite

Wayfaring A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care

Book · July 11, 2024 With gentle guidance and practical suggestions, Wayfaring is an essential resource for pastors and practitioners as well as for Christians who seek mental health care. ... Cite

Protecting Life or Managing Risk? Suicide Prevention and the Lure of Medicalized Control

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · August 1, 2023 Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States and in many other parts of the world. As such, suicide is frequently framed as a medical and public health problem for which solutions are best recommended by medical and public health authorities. W ... Full text Cite

Repairing moral injury takes a team: what clinicians can learn from combat veterans.

Journal Article J Med Ethics · May 2023 Moral injury results from the violation of deeply held moral commitments leading to emotional and existential distress. The phenomenon was initially described by psychologists and psychiatrists associated with the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Aff ... Full text Link to item Cite

Responses to mental health issues among Chinese American Christian communities: report from focus group conversations

Journal Article Mental Health, Religion and Culture · January 1, 2023 Religious and cultural factors play an important part in shaping attitudes about mental health. This study focuses on mental health-related beliefs of a specific ethnocultural population: Chinese American Christians. Using an online adaptation of nominal g ... Full text Cite

Prescribing Together A Relational Guide to Psychopharmacology

Book · June 1, 2021 By focusing on how, rather than what, to prescribe, this book makes room for patients' lived experiences and interpersonal and social contexts, returning to them a sense of agency and empowering them to set meaningful goals and to be active ... ... Cite

Crisis in psychiatric diagnosis? Epistemological humility in the DSM era

Journal Article Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (United Kingdom) · December 1, 2020 The modern editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), beginning with DSM-III in 1980, emerged in response to notable challenges to psychiatry's practices and ways of knowing in the early 1970s. Because these challenges thr ... Full text Cite

Challenging the Hegemony of the Symptom: Reclaiming Context in PTSD and Moral Injury.

Journal Article J Med Philos · November 30, 2020 Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is now constituted by a set of characteristic symptoms, its roots lie in Post-Vietnam Syndrome, a label generated by a Vietnam-era advocacy movement that focused not on symptoms but on war's traumatic context. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Religion and Caregiving for Orphans and Vulnerable Children: A Qualitative Study of Caregivers Across Four Religious Traditions and Five Global Contexts.

Journal Article J Relig Health · June 2020 Studies of caregivers of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) rarely examine the role religion plays in their lives. We conducted qualitative interviews of 69 caregivers in four countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Cambodia, and India (Hyderabad and Nagaland), and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Mental Health and Trauma

Chapter · January 1, 2020 Cite

From obligation to opportunity: future of patient-reported outcome measures at the Veterans Health Administration.

Journal Article Transl Behav Med · November 25, 2019 Patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures are particularly important in mental health services because patients are the central and essential source of information about their mental health status. PRO measures have the potential to engage patients in meanin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Health Care as Vocation? Practicing Faithfully in an Age of Disenchantment

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · November 5, 2019 In his 1917 lecture "Science as a Vocation," Max Weber challenged current and aspiring scholars to abandon any pretense that science (Wissenschaft) bears within itself any meaning. In a disenchanted age, he argued, science could at best offer "knowledge of ... Full text Cite

Putting virtues in context: engaging the VIA classification of character strengths in caregiving for orphans and vulnerable children across cultures

Journal Article Journal of Positive Psychology · November 2, 2019 The VIA Classification of Character Strengths has broken important ground for measuring character strengths across cultures. Because the VIA Classification is a closed system of abstract strengths, however, it is unknown how end-users engage strengths in p ... Full text Open Access Cite

Caring and thriving: An international qualitative study of caregivers of orphaned and vulnerable children and strategies to sustain positive mental health

Journal Article · March 1, 2019 © 2018 Background: Child well-being is associated with caregiver mental health. Research has focused on the absence or presence of mental health problems, such as depression, in caregivers. However, positive mental health – defined as the presence of posit ... Full text Open Access Cite

Meeting Christian voluntarism on its own terms

Journal Article Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology · December 1, 2018 Full text Cite

"As one infirm, I approach the balm of life": Psychiatric medication, agency, and freedom in the psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · October 26, 2018 People often take psychiatric medication in order to obtain both freedom from painful experience and freedom for relationships and vocation. Thomas Aquinas' account of agency and freedom offers resources for using medications wisely. For Aquinas, bodily he ... Full text Cite

Taking our meds faithfully? Christian engagements with psychiatric medication

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · October 26, 2018 One in seven American adults takes medication to alter or to prevent unwanted experience or behavior. But, the prescription and use of psychiatric medication raises practically important theological and ethical questions for practitioners, for clergy, for ... Full text Cite

The politics of virtue: An Aristotelian-Thomistic engagement with the VIA classification of character strengths

Journal Article Journal of Positive Psychology · September 3, 2017 The VIA Classification of Character Strengths is often presented as cross-culturally valid, but this is methodologically and philosophically ungrounded: the VIA Classification rather reflects the particular political and moral commitments of the workgroups ... Full text Cite

Augustine, divine agency, and therapeutic change

Journal Article Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology · September 1, 2017 Full text Cite

Theology and Medicine

Chapter · 2017 Cite

Spirituality, Religion, and Rational Suicide

Chapter · December 15, 2016 This book provides a comprehensive view of rational suicide in the elderly, a group that has nearly twice the rate of suicide when chronically ill than any other demographic. ... Link to item Cite

Spirituality, Religion, and Rational Suicide

Chapter · October 27, 2016 This book provides a comprehensive view of rational suicide in the elderly, a group that has nearly twice the rate of suicide when chronically ill than any other demographic. ... Link to item Cite

“I Am Still With You”: Dementia and the Christian Wayfarer

Journal Article Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging · April 2, 2016 Persons with dementia suffer not only from neuropathology but also from cultural norms that exalt agency, privilege rationality, equate worth with capacity, and discourage disability and dependence. In Christian theological context, however, these are faul ... Full text Cite

"The hope to which he has called you": Medicine in Christian apocalyptic context

Journal Article Christian Bioethics · April 1, 2016 The writers of the Christian New Testament are widely recognized to have inherited and extended the tradition of Jewish apocalyptic thought, a tradition which anticipated that the enslaving powers of a broken world would be defeated by a decisive unveiling ... Full text Cite

American Christian Engagement With Mental Health and Mental Illness.

Journal Article Psychiatr Serv · January 2016 Although religious belief and practice are relevant to mental health outcomes, many clinicians lack knowledge of particular religious traditions required to make informed judgments about referral to and collaboration with faith-based organizations and clin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Presence of mind: Thomistic prudence and contemporary mindfulness practices

Conference Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics · March 1, 2015 Full text Cite

Critical response to the psychiatric case studies: A psychiatrist’s perspective.

Chapter · February 21, 2015 psychological/emotional, social and spiritual, categories whose boundaries are arbitrary and negotiable); however, in clinical practice its use adds little beyond the use of terms like 'spiritual or existential pain or distress'. Chaplain Redl do ... Cite

Moral engagement, combat trauma, and the lure of psychiatric dualism: why psychiatry is more than a technical discipline.

Journal Article Harv Rev Psychiatry · 2015 Psychiatry is not only a technical discipline concerned with matching appropriate means to pre-specified ends; it is also a discipline of moral engagement and discernment in which clinicians and patients explore the ends that patients will pursue. Moral en ... Full text Link to item Cite

Why gerontologists should care about empirical research on religion and health: transdisciplinary perspectives.

Journal Article Gerontologist · December 2013 A large volume of empirical research has accumulated on the relationship between religion/spirituality (R/S) and health since the year 2000, much of it involving older adults. The purpose of this article is to discuss how this body of existing research fin ... Full text Link to item Cite

A psychopharmacology course for psychiatry residents utilizing active-learning and residents-as-teachers to develop life-long learning skills.

Journal Article Acad Psychiatry · September 2013 OBJECTIVE: The authors describe the implementation and evaluation of a 1-year psychopharmacology course using residents-as-teachers and active-learning exercises intended to improve understanding of current psychopharmacology and its evidence base, and ski ... Full text Link to item Cite

Professionalism: etiquette or habitus?

Journal Article Mayo Clin Proc · July 2013 Full text Link to item Cite

The biopolitics of defining ‘mental disorder.’

Chapter · May 17, 2013 Ten years later, despite some detailed conceptual work on the DSM-5 definition which was explicitly acknowledged and credited by the DSM-5 Task Force [28], there is no evidence that the DSM-5 definition has been any more influential in the ... ... Cite

"Hope that is seen is no hope at all:" theological constructions of hope in psychotherapy.

Journal Article Bull Menninger Clin · 2013 Contemporary psychology and psychiatry have increasingly focused on hope as a human phenomenon relevant to physical and psychological well-being. Contemporary psychological research, however, often considers hope anthropocentrically and cannot speak direct ... Full text Link to item Cite

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue. Part 4: general conclusion.

Journal Article Philos Ethics Humanit Med · December 18, 2012 In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis - the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along wi ... Full text Link to item Cite

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 2: Issues of conservatism and pragmatism in psychiatric diagnosis.

Journal Article Philos Ethics Humanit Med · July 5, 2012 In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1 ... Full text Link to item Cite

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 3: issues of utility and alternative approaches in psychiatric diagnosis.

Journal Article Philos Ethics Humanit Med · May 23, 2012 In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1 ... Full text Link to item Cite

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 1: conceptual and definitional issues in psychiatric diagnosis.

Journal Article Philos Ethics Humanit Med · January 13, 2012 In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1 ... Full text Link to item Cite

Combat Trauma and moral fragmentation: A theological account of moral injury

Journal Article Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics · January 1, 2012 Full text Cite

Rethinking professionalism in medical education through formation.

Journal Article Fam Med · May 2011 Contemporary educational approaches to professionalism do not take into account the dominant influence that the culture of academic medicine has on the nascent professional attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of medical learners. This article examines format ... Link to item Cite

Whose disorder?: a constructive MacIntyrean critique of psychiatric nosology.

Journal Article J Med Philos · April 2011 The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has for decades been a locus of dispute between ardent defenders of its scientific validity and vociferous critics who charge that it covertly cloaks dispute ... Full text Link to item Cite

Medical education as moral formation: an Aristotelian account of medical professionalsim.

Journal Article Perspect Biol Med · 2010 The medical professionalism movement, bolstered by many influential medical organizations and institutions, has in the last decade produced a number of conceptual definitions of professionalism and a number of concrete proposals for its measurement and tea ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Professionalism in modern medicine: does the emperor have any clothes?

Journal Article Acad Med · January 2007 The virtues that constitute medical professionalism have been aptly described in multiple position statements from professional organizations and individuals. These professional virtues depend on particular moral community traditions to undergird and susta ... Full text Link to item Cite

Aripiprazole: pharmacology, efficacy, safety and tolerability.

Journal Article Expert Rev Neurother · May 2005 Aripiprazole is a recently released antipsychotic medication which differs from other atypical antipsychotic agents by its partial agonist activity at postsynaptic D2 receptors. It is administered orally and is distinguished by a long elimination phase hal ... Full text Link to item Cite

Should doctors ever lie on behalf of patients?

Journal Article JAMA · November 3, 1999 Link to item Cite

Indecision.

Journal Article JAMA · November 4, 1998 Link to item Cite