Conclusion: Summary of what clinicians need to know
In editing this book, our desire was to provide clinicians with knowledge about religion and mental health that would be useful in the treatment of patients with psychiatric disorders. In addition, we thought that clinicians would also find useful information on more theoretical issues such as history, neurobiology, and theology as they relate to psychiatry. OVERVIEW A growing scientific literature based on religion and psychiatry has allowed rapid progress in the integration of religion into psychiatry. Despite this progress, the integration of relevant religious issues into clinical practice will likely meet resistance for many years to come. There is some question, however, about whether concepts such as well-being, meaning, or even recovery belong exclusively to the domain of conventional psychiatry. (1) In their description of the complex interactions between religion and psychiatry, Palouzian and Park (2) define a multilevel interdisciplinary paradigm, which, as mentioned in the introduction, should accommodate many dimensions of psychology and psychiatry, but also other domains like evolutionary biology, neurosciences, anthropology, philosophy, and other allied areas of science. A thorough discussion of these conceptual issues is far beyond the scope of the present book. However, this complexity and multidisciplinarity may be viewed as richness, which is reflected in the diversity of perspectives presented in this book. Thus, we hope that, despite a certain level of subjectivity, the diversity of approaches expressed here has at least exposed readers to the multidisciplinary nature of this interaction between religion and mental health care.
