Drs. Josephson and Peteet have assembled a collection of essays critical to the practice of psychiatry in a country that is becoming increasingly diverse in spiritual worldviews. Regardless of whether practitioners believe that spirituality plays a role in improving mental health (or aggravating mental illness), few can doubt that practitioners must understand the spiritual context out of which psychiatric symptoms emerge. Some attempts to address this spiritual context (or worldview) reduce spirituality to a construct that can be assessed generically, that is, one size fits all. The authors of these essays, in contrast, speak to the diversity of spiritual worldviews and the need for the psychiatrist to be familiar with this diversity. Though this volume takes a path less traveled, I believe it takes the correct path to achieve the editors' goal—'to understand the place of our own and our patients' worldviews in our clinical work.'—Dan G. Blazer, M.D., Ph.D., JP Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

When the students are ready, the teacher will come. The psychiatric community is finally ready to examine carefully our individual and collective spiritual values. With this groundbreaking book, we will begin seeing our spiritual development as a protector rather than a risk factor for a healthy, creative mind.—Richard K. Harding, M.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Columbia, South Carolina

Drs. Josephson and Peteet bring clarity to a very rarely discussed topic: worldviews are the unacknowledged elephants in the consulting room, silently in the background, shaping every clinical encounter.—Elizabeth S. Bowman, M.D., S.T.M., Private Practice Psychiatrist and Clinical Professor, Department of Neurology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana

Everyone, including patient and clinician, has a worldview, a philosophy of life, which affects the clinical encounter. This book provides a thoughtful and practical approach for clinicians and trainees to enhance the therapeutic alliance and understand transference-countertransference issues which arise when therapists and clinicians have either the same or different worldviews. In our increasingly multicultural society, this book is an essential roadmap for incorporating worldview and spirituality into our assessment and treatment planning, which will improve our quality of care.—Francis G. Lu, M.D., Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco, Department of Psychiatry, San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, California

Psychiatrists have long needed a bridge that could connect their worlds of psychobiology and psychotherapy traditions with the spiritualities, religions, and political ideologies that ground the lives of so many of their patients. Handbook of Spirituality and Worldview in Clinical Practice helps clinicians move from the known to the unknown, from the familiar language of psychodynamic constructs and DSM-IV disorders to patients' religious beliefs and spiritual practices that can also promote therapeutic change. Its chapters provide guidance for assessing a patient's spirituality, as well as tutorials on the specific beliefs for Catholic and Protestant Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and atheists and agnostics.—James L. Griffith, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, The George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C.

Clinical assessment of the patient's worldview is not for the careless or unprepared. In addition to humility, those who venture into the delicate and daunting forest of the patient's spiritual life need a guide. Josephson, Peteet, and their colleagues have provided such a guide in this finely balanced and clinically rich treatment.—Leigh C. Bishop, M.D., M.A., Menninger Department of Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine and Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Houston, Texas

The book is an important step in acknowledging the changing face of psychiatry in America. As psychiatrists (and, indeed, as human beings), we need occasional reminders to ask informed questions and then to listen to the answers. This book provides both the reminder and. . . the information.—The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 6/1/2006

This book could not have appeared ten years ago—it is a tribute to progress in the field of spirituality and health that it appears now. . . . The volume should enable clinicians to adopt a more sympathetic approach to their patients' worldviews, especially if they differ from their own, but a greater self-awareness on the part of the physician is no less important.—The Scientific and Medical Network Review, 6/1/2006