Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry

15 Community Psychiatry and ReligionMARCUS M. MCKINNEYSUMMARYMore people in the spiritual community aroundthe world offer counseling and support to thosesuffering from mental illness than we can presentlymeasure effectively. Yet these individualscollectively care for the soul in ways that our communityrelies on every day. When we think aboutwhere people go to access care when they are sufferingfrom mental illness, we cannot overlookthis group. Clinicians depend on sophisticatedcredentialing and training to provide their services.Although many in the spiritual communityare also equipped to minister to their members,they often do not receive specialized training incounseling and even fewer have supervision availableto them.Th e inclusion of spiritual providers of carein training, collaboration, and referral withmental health providers provides challengesand opportunities for many communities. Bothwill be addressed in this chapter. Sustainedrecovery-oriented models of care can buildon the unique resource of spiritual providersembedded in the community. In this section,we explore why people sometimes go to spiritualleaders for help, identify who the providersare, and discuss how to honor this point ofaccess while adding quality to care. We will alsooffer ideas about developing locally relevanttraining and present ways to collaborate andestablish a network of referral. Finally, we willoffer resources to guide the process of ensuringquality for all providers sensitive to communitypsychiatry and religion.Anyone who wants to know the humanpsyche will learn next to nothing fromexperimental psychology. He would be betteradvised to put away his scholar’s gown,bid farewell to his study, and wander withthe human heart through the world. There,in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylumsand hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, inbrothels and gambling halls, in the salons ofthe elegant, the Stock Exchanges, Socialistmeetings, churches, revivalist gatheringsand ecstatic sects, through love and hate,through the experience of passion in everyform in his own body, he would reap richerstores of knowledge than text-books a footthick could give him, and he will know howto doctor the sick with real knowledge ofthe human soul.(1)– Carl Gustav JungOn any given day in any given town, odds aremany people in distress will reach out to theirlocal, trusted faith leader for help. In fact, aboutone-quarter of people with a psychiatric diagnosiswill have first sought help from clergy.(2)Faith leaders (“Faith Leader” is a general termpurposely used along with “spiritual leader”and clergy to signify the multiple importantroles of religious/spiritual persons often soughtby average people when in distress) do notoften have advanced training to provide mentalhealth services, yet they remain a primaryaccess point of care for many. These faith leaders“care for the soul,” (3) an ancient notion thatappreciates the root idea behind the “psyche.”They are well acquainted with “real knowledge215