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Proposed College working party on psychiatry and religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

John Cox  and
Alison J. Gray
John Cox
Affiliation:
Royal College of Psychiatrists, and Co-Chair, Centre for Faith Science and Values in Healthcare, University of Gloucestershire, email: [email protected]
Alison J. Gray
Affiliation:
Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, WholeCare Research Fellow and Research Associate, University of Birmingham School of Psychology
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The Psychiatrist , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , March 2011 , pp. 118
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2011

The establishing of a Royal College of Psychiatrists’ working party to consider the boundaries of psychiatry and religion, as suggested by Poole & Higgo, Reference Poole and Higgo1 is indeed a pragmatic, constructive and, in our view, long overdue proposal.

It was in 1991 that our Patron, the Prince of Wales, first reminded the College that therapy involved body, mind and spirit. 2 In that same year, the current President Dinesh Bhugra organised a meeting at the Institute of Psychiatry at which Bill Fulford cogently urged delegates to explore the limits of tolerance at the boundaries of psychiatric practice and religious belief. Reference Fulford and Bhugra3

Can the President please, in his last year of office, establish a working party which would consider these matters, consult widely and make recommendations relevant to the core clinical, research and educational objectives of the College? Such a working party will require the arms-length approach of transcultural psychiatry as well as a broad, multifaith perspective and astute leadership, fully sensitive to the concerns of religious and secular psychiatrists as well as service users and other health professionals.

If the World Psychiatric Association can be approaching an international consensus on this subject, Reference Verhagen, van Praag, Lopez-Ibor, Cox and Moussaoui4 then surely the College can usefully now give a lead in Europe where these matters are particularly pressing.

References

1 Poole, R, Higgo, R. Psychiatry, religion and spirituality: a way forward. Psychiatrist 2010; 34: 452–3.Google Scholar
2 HRH The Prince of Wales. Lecture by HRH The Prince of Wales, as Patron, to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Brighton, Friday 5 July 1991. Br J Psychiatry 1991; 159: 763–8.Google Scholar
3 Fulford, KWM. Religion and psychiatry: extending the limits of tolerance. In Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies (ed Bhugra, D): 5–23. Routledge,, 1996.Google Scholar
4 Verhagen, P, van Praag, HM, Lopez-Ibor, JJ, Cox, JL, Moussaoui, D (eds). Religion and Psychiatry: Beyond Boundaries. Wiley Blackwell, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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