Hinduism and Mental Health: engaging British Hindus

Abstract

Understanding service users’ symptoms in the context of their cultural background can be of great assistance in diagnosing and managing their illness and possibly even more so when trying to engage them in services. It only stands to reason then that with many service users using spirituality or religion as way of making sense of who they are, some understanding of the spiritual principles on which many cultures are based, would be useful. In this paper we will be looking at the teachings of Hinduism and how they may influence Hindus suffering mental health problems, in particular, British Hindus.

Keywords:

• spirituality
• Hinduism
• mental health