Spirit, Science, and Health: How the Spiritual Mind Fuels Physical Wellness

From meditation to reciting mantras or praying, spirituality is more and more often being recognized for its beneficial effects on health. In this volume, a team of experts from across disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing, public health, and pastoral care offer reader-friendly chapters showing the state of the art in understanding this connection. Chapters include attention to special populations such as youth, HIV/AIDS patients, cancer patients, and those in hospice care. Contributors, all members of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University, aim to use the scientific understanding of the spirituality/health connection to promote better health for the general public.

From meditation to reciting mantras or praying, spirituality is more and more often being recognized for its beneficial effects on health. In this volume, a team of experts from across disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing, public health, and pastoral care offer reader-friendly chapters showing the state of the art in understanding this connection. Chapters include attention to special populations such as youth, HIV/AIDS patients, cancer patients, and those in hospice care. Contributors, all members of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University, aim to use the scientific understanding of the spirituality/health connection to promote better health for the general public. One focus of this volume is to show easy ways to incorporate spiritual practices in an environment that is often multicultural, multi-religious, stressful, hurried, and secular.

Thomas G. Plante is Professor and Chair of Psychology at Santa Clara University and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has authored, edited, or co-edited 10 books, and more than 100 chapters and journal articles. Widely known in the popular media, Plante has been featured in TIME, People, USA Today, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. He is series editor for the Preager series, Abnormal Psychology.

Carl E. Thoresen is Professor Emeritus of Education and Psychology, and, by courtesy, Psychiatry/Behavioral Science at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Spirituality & Health Institute at Santa Clara University. Thoresen has worked in the field of Counseling and Health Psychology for more than 30 years. A Founding Fellow for the Society of Behavioral Medicine, he served on an Expert Panel for the National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences, focused on spirituality and health. His many awards include the John Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, election to Fellow status in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Association, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.