Spiritual care and psychiatric treatment: an introduction

Fonte: http://apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/8/4/249

Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2002) 8: 249-258
© 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Spiritual care and psychiatric treatment: an introduction
Larry Culliford


Larry Culliford is a consultant psychiatrist in the South Downs Health NHS Trust (Brighton Community Mental Health Centre, 79 Buckingham Road, Brighton BN1 3RJ, UK). A practising Christian, with wide ecumenical and inter-faith interests, he is a member of the Scientific and Medical Network (http://www.scimednet.org) and the Thomas Merton Society (http://stop.at/thomasmerton/). As ‘Patrick Whiteside’ he writes self-help books about happiness.

The Patron of the Royal College of Psychiatrists has pointed out the irony involved in recording patients' religion, without seeking to discover that all this means to them in terms of understanding and coping with their illness (HRH The Prince of Wales, 1991). One College past-President (Sims, 1994) firmly recommends evaluating the religious and spiritual experiences of our patients in assessing aetiology, diagnosis, prognosis and planning treatment. Across the water, an American Journal of Psychiatry editorial (Andreasen, 1996) has it that, ‘We must practice and preach the fact that psychiatrists are physicians to the soul as well as the body.’

The World Health Organization (WHO) involved more than 30 collaborating centres in the development of its instrument for measuring quality of life, the WHO Quality of Life (WHOQOL), which is structured by six domains (Box 1). A report on the proposed spirituality, religious and personal beliefs (SRPB) domain (WHO, 1998) quotes the WHO Constitution's definition of health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease’.