Conclusion

To conclude, it has been argued that hope is evidenced in treatments which: 1) promote mastery, 2) provide meaning, 3) reduce anticipated isolation or alienation, and 4) increase one's sense of dignity and self-worth to face the future positively. Spiritual practices such as religious services, study of sacred texts, and prayer and meditation have the potential to accomplish these ends. In working with patients, the religious professional can choose to emphasize those aspects of the patient's spiritual tradition that are self-empowering, promoting basic human goodness and the divine self within. And since many patients already have a keen understanding of evil and sin, confession and forgiveness also can be therapeutic.

Individuals around the world derive hope from a multitude of spiritual traditions, yet to date little has been done to examine this relationship in the context of psychiatry. The examples offered in this chapter suggest that religious and spiritual traditions can offer hope through: promoting connection with something greater than the individual, promising support by divinity and community, permitting grief and the expression of complex emotions, enabling a ministry of presence, affirming the inherent worth of the each individual and his/her gifts, refraining obstacles as challenges that can be overcome, and looking to the future rather than the past.

While religion does not always foster hope, their linked psychological origins suggests that hope is built into a religious world view. The religious professional needs to approach his/her job with great care, as there is much at stake in how religion is conveyed to the individual diagnosed with a mental illness. An approach centered on human depravity and an authoritarian God can take away personal agency rather than promote it. In contrast, a perspective centered on the loving, forgiving divine nature within all of us is wholesome, healing, and entertains a hopeful future. Fostering hope is a core feature of any spiritual intervention, and we now turn to ways it can be fostered in cases of mood and anxiety.