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Among the research studies related to the relevance between religious belief and mental health, most of them highlight people with religious belief who tend to obtain mental comforting more easily. However, the research studies mentioned above were cross-sectional studies, and they only verified that religious beliefs and mental health are relevant, but they did not prove their cause-and-effect relationship. That is, they do not identify “due to people's religious beliefs, they have healthier mind” or “due to people's healthier minds, they have religious beliefs.” Therefore, the study aims to explore the benefit evaluation of religious belief affecting mental health.

The study uses propensity score matching (PSM) and treatment effect (ATT) to carry out the causal inference between religious beliefs and mental health. First, the propensity score (PS) is calculated from the impact factors that affect people's religious belief before establishing counterfactual analysis based on the PS to analyze the effect of religious beliefs to further understand the difference of mental health index between people with religious belief and without it, and confirm the cause-and-effect relationship between them.

Religious beliefs and participation are ubiquitous within and across populations. The associates between religious participation and health are considerably in great magnitude. Most of the research in the past related to religious beliefs and mental health only verified that religious beliefs and mental health are relevant but not proved its cause-and-effect relationship. This paper aimed to explore the causal relationship between religious belief and mental health. The experimental results showed religious belief has treatment effect toward “daily functioning,” “feeling affect,” “spirituality” and “mental health.” On a whole, religious belief can promote mental health.

In academic and practical circles, there are a lot of research studies exploring the relationship between religious belief and mental health. However, there is no research investigating the cause-and-effect relationship between religious belief and mental health. It also causes some questioning toward the relevant research studies. Therefore, the outcome of this study not only can clarify the legitimacy, importance, and practicality on the researches in the past but also provide the practical support for psychology and counseling.

This study aims to investigate the association between mental health and religion among Thailand’s elderly population. The role of religion and culture remains limited despite the significant number of devout followers of religions in Thailand. Thai cultural and religious contexts have a dominant and persuasive influence on the lives of Thai older adults.

Data was collected in 2018 via face-to-face interaction using a structured questionnaire by the Thailand National Statistical Office. The sample consisted of 67,454 individuals, with 13,800 elderly Thai people aged 60 years or older selected for the study.

The results showed logistic regression with the association between religious activities and mental health in the understudied context of Buddhist elderly in Thailand. The variables were significantly associated with mental health at a 95% confidence level.

The model revealed that particular demographic and socioeconomic factors (age, education and marital status) were related to mental health for older adults. Regression analysis also revealed Buddhist religious activities (giving food to monks, mediation, monkhood, New Year praying, learning Dhamma for solving life’s problems, belief in Buddhism and practicing Buddhist principles) were significantly associated with the mental health of the older adult population in Thailand.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which inpatient mental health services attend to the religious needs of service-users. Literature is presented to argue that whilst the importance of religion is highlighted in consumer accounts, research and policy; inpatient services continue to neglect religion and service-users consistently report insufficient attention to religious needs during hospitalisation.

This review adopts a narrative approach to the literature, drawing upon published journal articles, book chapters and policy documentation.

Literature into the topic area is reviewed and discussed within three themes. First, the extent to which religious needs are currently met is explored. Second, potential reasons for neglect of religion are considered. Finally, examples of religiously informed group programmes, individual psychotherapy and the use of traditional healers are detailed.

Findings of the review point towards the requirement for inpatient services to more adequately meet religious needs in terms of available facilities. The need for spiritual assessment and collaboration with hospital chaplains is also highlighted, along with the call for increased staff training.

It is expected that this review will be of interest to a range of stakeholders including professionals, policy makers and service users. It highlights the void in clinical attention to religious needs and offers practical suggestions for meeting this need.

Religion and spirituality are well-researched concepts within the field of psychology and mental health yet they have rarely been researched in high-secure services within the UK. Research in mental health and prison contexts suggests benefits of religion/spirituality to coping, social support, self-worth, symptoms of depression and anxiety and behavioural infractions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of religion/spirituality in high-secure service users’ personal recovery.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 13 male patients in a high-secure hospital, with primary diagnoses of mental illness (n=11) or personality disorder (n=2). Participants were from a range of religious/spiritual backgrounds and were asked about how their beliefs impact their recovery and care pathways within the hospital. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Three superordinate themes were identified: “religion and spirituality as providing a framework for recovery”; “religion and spirituality as offering key ingredients in the recovery process”; and “barriers to recovery through religion/spirituality”. The first two themes highlight some of the positive aspects that aid participants’ recovery. The third theme reported hindrances in participants’ religious/spiritual practices and beliefs. Each theme is discussed with reference to sub-themes and illustrative excerpts.

Religion/spirituality might support therapeutic engagement for some service users and staff could be more active in their enquiry of the value that patients place on the personal meaning of this for their life.

For the participants in this study, religion/spirituality supported the principles of recovery, in having an identity separate from illness or offender, promoting hope, agency and personal meaning.

Religion and mental health are not easy issues to address within the same framework. The unstable boundary between symptoms of psychosis and some forms of religious inspiration is only one element in a complex debate about the relationship between spirituality and mental health. Growing evidence of the significance of religious belief to people with mental health problems raises important questions about the role of spirituality in mental health promotion, the relationship between mental health service providers and spiritual leaders and the attitudes of faith communities to mental health issues.

There are intense current debates about the place of belief systems in a secular society, and also whether the mechanistic approach to mental health care is sufficient for human beings. This paper aims to describe the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation NHS Trust (BSMHFT) spirituality and mental health research programme within that context.

The research studies are placed within a discourse of current debates, but also within the specific context of the city of Birmingham. Birmingham is England's second city to London, and is an increasingly multi‐ethnic and multi‐cultural environment.

Those who use mental health services increasingly state that they wish to have the spiritual dimension of their lives attended to by professionals. The BSMHFT project reinforces this message and demonstrates the merits of close working with faith communities and engaging with staff in their understanding of spirituality.

The research by Professor Koenig et al. in the USA has demonstrated the physical and mental health benefits of belonging to a supportive faith community. The BSMHFT project is a rare UK example of research in this area and comes at a time of intense debate in England over the nature of society.

This paper aims to explore inpatient staff experiences of seeking to meet the religious and cultural needs of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) inpatients on mental health wards.

Nine semi-structured interviews were undertaken with inpatient staff in one NHS Trust in England to explore their views and experiences of supporting BAME inpatients to meet their religious and cultural needs. Anonymised transcripts were analysed thematically.

Inpatient staff reported lacking the confidence and knowledge to identify and meet BAME inpatients’ religious and cultural needs, especially inpatients from smaller ethnic groups and newly emerging communities. There was no specific assessment used to identify religious and cultural needs and not all inpatient staff received training on meeting these needs. Concerns were raised about difficulties for staff in differentiating whether unusual beliefs and practices were expressions of religiosity or delusions. Staff identified the potential role of inpatients’ family members in identifying and meeting needs, explaining religious and cultural beliefs and practices, and psychoeducation to encourage treatment or medication adherence.

Potential ways to address this gap in the knowledge and confidence of inpatient staff to meet the religious and cultural needs of BAME patients include training for inpatient staff; the production and updating of a directory of common religious and cultural practices and needs; local resources which can help to support those needs; and religious and cultural practices and needs being documented by mental health practitioners in community teams such that this information is readily available for inpatient staff if a service user is admitted.

This is the first study to consider inpatient staff views on meeting the religious and cultural needs of BAME informal patients and patients detained under the Mental Health Act 1983.

Although workplace bullying has often been considered a significant source of health-related problems, only a handful of studies have deeply examined this relationship. This paper aims to fill this gap by inspecting the direct as well as indirect relationships between bullying and emotional exhaustion. This study also explores the buffering role of religion between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion.

This correlational paper used the quantitative method of data collection (N = 102) from employees in Malaysia and used SmartPLS to analyze the data. To operationalize workplace bullying as the second-order factor, partial least squares was used to estimate the two-stage model through the repeated use of a manifest variable.

The result of the current study showed that workplace bullying has a positive impact on job insecurity as well as emotional exhaustion while also having a positive indirect effect on emotional exhaustion through job insecurity. Moreover, the result of this study reveals that religion has a moderating (buffering) influence on the relationship between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion.

The study merely applied self-report measures, thus potentially involving the common method variance problems.

Human resource professionals must be aware that employees who are exposed to bullying actions may consider emotional exhaustion and job security needs to be restored among targets. For instance, they need to ensure that no unwanted and illegitimate relocation or alternation of work task has occurred. Furthermore, it is significant to encourage employees to regularly attend religious services because religious involvement could foster mental health, in part by lowering the risk of exposure to stressful life events such as job insecurity.

This study could be beneficial for organizations and researchers looking to address emotional exhaustion, security and bullying in a context broader than physical health and may further supplement the discussions around workplace bullying, mental health and religion.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy with which care plans capture and make use of data on the spiritual and religious concerns of mental health service users in a UK Health and Social Care Trust.

A questionnaire was given to service users (n=71) and the findings compared with the information held on their behalf by the relevant Health and Social Care Trust at three key points in the care planning process.

The study found that the importance that many service users accorded to spirituality and religion was not reflected in the electronic records, that some information was wrong or wrongly nuanced when compared with the patient's self-description and that service users themselves were often mistaken regarding the type and quality of information held on record.

The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the process of information gathering, to the training and support of Care Coordinators and to the monitoring and revision of Care Plans. The discrepancy between the information supplied by service users and that recorded by the Trust suggests that, despite government guidance, spiritual and religious concerns are not being given consideration in the construction of care plans. Possible reasons for this oversight are discussed.

Although there have been studies of the delivery of “spiritual care” in general acute care, there have been no similar studies in relation to mental health service users and their needs. The comparison of information from the service users themselves with the information recorded by the Trust provides a measure of the extent to which service user's own perspectives are being incorporated into their care plans.