Wrestling with Our Inner Angels is Nancy Kehoe’s compelling, intimate, and moving story of how she brought her background as a psychologist and a nun in the Religious of the Sacred Heart to bear in the groups she formed to explore the role of faith and spirituality in their treatment – and in their lives. Through fascinating stories of her own spiritual journey, she gives readers of all backgrounds and interests new insights into the inner lives of the mentally ill and new ways of thinking about the role of spirituality and faith in all our lives.

Modern western culture seems to find angels, demons, and even dragons irresistible. They are the topic of many books, films, and television series. A recent poll indicated that nearly eighty percent of people believe in such beings. But they are hardly a modern invention. Such creatures that go beyond time and space have been imagined for centuries. The Bible itself addresses the topic with various tales of angels and demons, and yes, even dragons. If you are intrigued about this background, this book is for you. It reveals how thoroughly biblical these creatures are, and what they can still teach us.

Climbing Up the Downward Spiral takes a holistic approach in looking at practical, neurological, and spiritual issues, as it walks readers through the shadows of some of the most difficult problems of our time: financial loss; drug and alcohol abuse and addiction; mental illness; and suicide. The authors also share from their considerable personal experience with these problems. Bringing together some twenty years of work with people in programs of downtown, late-night ministry in different cities as well as personal experiences with illegal drugs, bipolar disorder, and a serious suicide attempt, Jones and Joseph walk readers through the shadows of our lives, offering encouragement, methods of coping, and above all, hope.

In his hymns and poems, Charles Wesley takes all who sing and read on an inward journey, asking soul-searching questions which are as up-to-date now as they were in the eighteenth century. They reflect his quest for identity as a human being, clergyman, and follower of Jesus Christ. His questions about God, Jesus, faith, others, self, the world, and daily living are still today’s questions. This book is not an exhaustive study of such questions in the context of Wesleyan history, theology, or hymnody. It is an attempt to look afresh at questions we are asking to which Charles Wesley often responded in familiar and unfamiliar hymns and poems.

This textbook uses concepts and methods of the humanities to enhance understanding of medicine and health care.

Many of the people served by social workers draw upon spirituality, by whatever names they call it, to help them thrive, to succeed at challenges, and to infuse their resources and relationships with meaning beyond mere survival value. This revised and expanded edition of a classic provides a comprehensive framework of values, knowledge, skills, and evidence for spiritually sensitive practice with diverse clients. Weaving together interdisciplinary theory and research, as well as the results from a national survey of practitioners, the authors describe a spiritually oriented model for practice that places clients' challenges and goals within the context of their deepest meanings and highest aspirations. Using richly detailed case examples and thought-provoking activities, this highly accessible text illustrates the professional values and ethical principles that guide spiritually sensitive practice. It presents definitions and conceptual models of spirituality and religion; draws connections between spiritual diversity and cultural, gender, and sexual orientation diversity; and offers insights from Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Indigenous religions, Islam, Judaism, Existentialism, and Transpersonal theory. Eminently practical, it guides professionals in understanding and assessing spiritual development and related mental health issues and outlines techniques that support transformation and resilience, such as meditation, mindfulness, ritual, forgiveness, and engagement of individual and community-based spiritual support systems. For social workers and other professional helpers committed to supporting the spiritual care of individuals, families, and communities, this definitive guide offers state-of-the-art interdisciplinary and international insights as well as practical tools that students and practitioners alike can put to immediate use.

‘Set up a trellis for flowering plants to climb all over: it’s there but unseen, supporting all that floral leaf-green beauty.’ In James Reaney on the Grid, Stan Dragland examines an artist fiercely loyal to his artistic practice, deploying the metaphor of the grid to explore the inherited literary patterns and archetypes underpinning works of London poet, playwright and educator James Reaney. With extensive references to Reaney’s considerable oeuvre (from early publications such as A Suit of Nettles and The Box Social to what is arguably his master work, The Donnellys), and to an eclectic collection of theorists, artists and contemporaries whose ideas inform and respond to Reaney’s, Dragland seeks to reveal not only what Reaney’s work is about but also what it does. In so doing, he takes readers by the hand in a surprisingly personal ramble through the processes and productions of one of Southern Ontario’s most influential writers.

Cultural Complexes and the Soul of America explores many of the cultural complexes that comprise the collective psychic-filtering system of emotions, ideas, and beliefs that possess the United States today. With chapters by an international selection of leading authors, the book covers ideas both broad and specific, and presents unique insight into the current state of the nation. The voices included in this volume amplify contemporary concerns, linking them to themes which have existed in the American psyche for decades while also looking to the future. Part One examines meta themes, including history, purity, dominion, and democracy in the age of Trump. Part Two looks at key complexes including race, gender, the environment, immigration, national character, and medicine. The overall message is that it is in wrestling with these complexes that the soul of America is forged or undone. This highly relevant book will be essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian ideas, politics, sociology, and American studies. It will also be of great interest to Jungian analysts in practice and in training, and anyone interested in the current state of the US.

Where is God in the suffering of a mentally ill person? What happens to the soul when the mind is ill? How are Christians to respond to mental illness? In this brave and compassionate book, theologian and priest Kathryn Greene-McCreight confronts these difficult questions raised by her own mental illness--bipolar disorder. With brutal honesty, she tackles often avoided topics such as suicide, mental hospitals, and electroconvulsive therapy. Greene-McCreight offers the reader everything from poignant and raw glimpses into the mind of a mentally ill person to practical and forthright advice for their friends, family, and clergy. The first edition has been recognized as one of the finest books on the subject. This thoroughly revised edition incorporates updated research and adds anecdotal and pastoral commentary. It also includes a new foreword by the current Archbishop of Canterbury and a new afterword by the author.

Companion to Primary Care Mental Health is the result of a major collaboration of an international group of general practitioners, psychiatrists, policy-makers, mental health professionals and mental health advocates. This extraordinary guide provides the best available evidence for the management of patients with mental health conditions in primary care. It draws on the wisdom of a range of experts from primary and secondary care, who have translated information from the literature and their own clinical experience to apply it across the globe to everyday family practice. With the emphasis on practical application it presents family doctors and their teams with the evidence-based knowledge necessary to support the development of fully integrated systems to promote good mental health using tables and figures to illustrate complex matters. This includes the need to harness the wider determinants of health and mental health and to tackle stigma through advocacy, spirituality and ethical practice. The role of public health and the management of the many interfaces associated with providing good mental health are also covered. It includes tools for assessment, including classification and risk assessment, and the general principles required to enable a biopsychosocial approach to care. The book also considers the individual mental health conditions that family doctors and their teams are likely to encounter. As comorbidity and the management of complexity are very common in primary care mental health, these are also explored in the final chapters of the book.