SPSIG Webinar - Religious Delusions; epistemic injustice and clinical significance

Religious delusions; epistemic injustice and clinical significance

Religious ideas and spiritual experiences are frequently potent themes during episodes of poor mental health.  As well as having clinical significance these aspects can hold profound personal significance for those going through the journey of psychosis or mania. But navigating the relationship between the pathological, phenomenological and personal narratives of these experiences can be challenging.

Dr Ouwehand, a mental health chaplain, has experience considering this dilemma from an anthropological perspective and as the subject of her PhD. She will be presenting a variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence around spiritual experience in bipolar patients.

Dr Arjan Braams, presents evidence from an old age population suffering psychosis with religious delusions. They will discuss the clinical, philosophical and practical implications of the presented evidence. With time for questions.  

The webinar will take place on Friday 1 December 2023, 9.30am - 11am.

09:30am - Introduction by Dr Gwen Adshead, Chair

09:35am - Dr Eva Ouwehand 

• Bipolar disorder and Religious and Spiritual experiences
• Key findings, clinical implications and lasting influence
• Discussion between speakers, and questions

09:50am - Dr Arjan Braam

• Religious delusions in older adults suffering from psychosis, (Dr Arjan Braam and Dr Annemarie Noort)
  
• Key findings with respect to patients with schizophrenia
• Discussion between speakers, revisiting religious grandiosity, and questions 

10:05am - Dr Arjan Braam

• Brief poster presentation (Martine van Vliet and Wilma Swildens): Care needs on meaning and purpose in life for patients with severe mental illness; findings from the Netherlands
• Discussion of systematic review of qualitative studies (Ritunnano et al. 2022) and other studies (Milner et al. 2020 and Leamy et al. 2011)

Dr Arjan Braams

Arjan W. Braam (1969), MD, PhD, followed his psychiatry training in the 'Valeriuskliniek', Amsterdam, and has been working as a psychiatrist at the Altrecht Mental Health Care, Utrecht, the Netherlands, since 2003, in the Department of Acute Psychiatry. He is head of the Department of Residency Training at this institution. 

He also holds an endowed chair on 'Religion, Worldview and Psychiatry' at the University of Humanist Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands. 

His research interests include the empirical study of religiousness, spirituality and meaning in life and psychiatry; the epidemiology of late-life depression; and the empirical study of issues in emergency psychiatry.  He is a member of the European Network on Religion, Spirituality and Health and is a board member of the Kenniscentrum Levensbeschouwing & Geestelijke Volksgezondheid (KSGV).

Dr Eva Ouwehand 

Eva Ouwehand (MTheol, PhD) is hospital chaplain in mental health care since 1988 and has been working at Altrecht Mental Health Care since 2004. Since 2020, she is also associated with a hospice in Zutphen, the Netherlands.

Her PhD study focussed on religious experiences in bipolar disorder and was theoretically rooted in religious studies/anthropology.  It combined qualitative interviews with recovered patients about phenomenology and meaning of religious experiences with quantitative research about occurrence of those experiences and explanatory models for them. She is interested in the overlapping area between psychosis and religious experiences and how to approach this topic in clinical practice.

She is a guest teacher at the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society of the Groningen University for religion and psychopathology.

The webinar will be recorded and the recording will be shared with attendees who have purchased a ticket for the webinar. Recordings are available to view for three months after the event.

Please read our terms and conditions before making your booking.