Secular psychiatry and the self

Abstract

We assume that western mental health practice is a secular enterprise without usually bothering to define the term. This may turn out to be not just about institutional identities and procedures that safeguard diversity but about ways in which mental health practice implicitly employs and is informed by secularised concepts of the self seen as historically conditioned but with theological and moral sources. This article explores the implications for a holistic biopsychosocial model if it neglects a central organising principle like the self.

Keywords:

• self, secular, spirituality, religion, psychiatry, biopsychosocial