This document discusses the relationship between biology, religion, spirituality and mental health from both a historical and scientific perspective. It summarizes that religion and spirituality have long been linked to medicine and views of health. Modern neuroscience and genetic research provide evidence that spiritual and religious experiences are real neurological phenomena. While religion and science were once seen as incompatible, an integrated view recognizes their compatibility. The role of spirituality in resilience and healing is also discussed.

2. Biology and Religion
Prof. Hani Hamed Dessoki, M.D.Psychiatry
Prof. Psychiatry
Acting Dean, Faculty of Applied Mental Health sciences
Beni Suef University
Supervisor of Psychiatry Department
El-Fayoum University
APA member

3. History of Science and Religion
• Evidence of spiritual practices dating back to ancient cave
drawings
• Myths: from Greek “mythos” meaning “word”  one spoken
with deep and unquestioned authority
• Myths of all world cultures are strikingly, consistently similar
– Virgin births, world-cleansing floods, lands of the dead, expulsions
from paradise, dead and resurrected heroes
• All religions are founded on myth
• Myths are created by basic, universal aspects of the brain ,
particularly the fundamental neurological processes through
which the brain makes sense of the world

4. Historical Precedent
Medicine and Religion
• Medicine and religion historically linked
• Hippocratic writings
– physicians received authority from gods
• Middle Ages
– sickness punishment from God
– cure by praying
– doctors were “collaborators with God”
• 15th to early 18th century
– close relationship continued

5. Historical Precedent
Medicine and Religion
• 19th, early 20th centuries still viewed religion
as important in practice of medicine
• Mid 20th century, unacceptable to discuss
religion in a secular health care setting
• Past two decades, increased interest in
medicine and spirituality

6. "Religion and science are compatible

7. Trend Today
• Many books on science
and spirituality
• Popular literature
• Templeton Foundation
• Curriculum in medical
schools and residencies

8. Religion versus Spirituality
• Religion:
– Latin religare: “to bind
together”
– Organizes the collective
spiritual experiences of group
of people into system of
beliefs, practices, and rituals
– Tradition, oral and written
• Spirituality:
– Latin spiritualitas: “breath”
– Broader concept than
religion--dynamic, personal,
experiential process
– Quest for meaning and
purpose, transcendence,
connectedness, values
– Personal quest for answers to
ultimate questions about life,
meaning
– Gives one a sense of
peace/joy

9. Brain versus Mind
• Brain
– Collection of physical
structures that gather
and process sensory,
cognitive and emotional
data
• Mind
– Phenomenon of
thoughts, memories and
emotions that arise from
the perceptual processes
of the brain

10. Why is this Important?
• Surveys show that 90% of Americans believe in a
higher being
• 90 % pray or meditate
• > 70 % believe in life after death
• Majority want their physicians to discuss religion
with them
• DSM-IV inclusion of diagnostic category “religious or
spiritual problem”

11. Psychiatrists and Spirituality
• Psychiatrists are measurably less religious than:
– The general population
– Their patients
– Other physicians
• Generally endorse positive influences on health
• More likely than other physicians to note that
religion/spirituality can cause negative emotions that
lead to increased patient suffering

12. Psychiatrists and Spirituality
• More likely to encounter religion/spirituality issues in
clinical settings
– (92% versus 74%)
• More open to addressing religious/spiritual issues
with patients
– (93% versus 53%)
• Psychiatrists are more comfortable, and have more
experience, addressing religious/spiritual concerns in
the clinical setting
Curlin et al, Am J Psychiatry, 2007

13. Studies and Physical Health
• Majority of the ~350 studies of physical health have
found that religious involvement and spirituality are
associated with better health outcomes.
– Cardiovascular, decreased rate of CVA’s
– Lowers blood pressure
– Health-promoting behaviors
• “Lack of religious involvement has an effect on
mortality equivalent to 40 years of smoking one pack
of cigarettes/day.
Harold Koenig, MD, Duke

14. Studies and Mental Health
• Religious involvement associated with:
– lower risk of depression.
– less anxiety.
– less substance abuse.
– Improved self-esteem
– Less social isolation
• Inverse relationship between religious
involvement and suicide.

15. Spirituality and the Chronically Mentally Ill
• Generally viewed as pathological or symptoms
of mental illness.
• Little research done in this area.
• Religious delusions and auditory hallucinations
common in psychosis.
• Hyper-religiosity common in mania.

16. Spirituality and the Chronically Mentally Ill
• Solution versus symptom
• Treatment conflict or collaboration
• Socialization or increased isolation
• Negative versus positive religiosity
• Psychosis or mystical experience or normal
experience
• Mystic versus psychotic
– Distinct differences

17. Negative Religiosity
• “I feel God is punishing me for my sins or lack
of spirituality”
• “I wonder why God has abandoned me”
• “If I believed more/was a better person this
wouldn’t have happened”
• Sees God as judgmental and punitive

18. Negative Religiosity
• Negative AH from God, Satan, demons
– command AH especially worrisome
• Negative/harmful/dangerous delusions
– worthless person, offended God, have to pay for
their sins, perform acts to appease God or atone
for their actions

19. Positive Religiosity
• “I look to God for strength, support and
guidance”
• “God will help me through this”
• Sees God as caring
• Religious beliefs provide positive self esteem
and image
• Prayer/meditation as coping mechanism

20. Psychology and Spirituality
• Dreams
– Pre-death dreams and ability to help prepare for
death
– Grief dreams
• Visitation, message, reassurance, trauma
– Prophetic or future dreams
• Deja-vu, out-of-body experiences, past-life
regressions

21. Biology and Spirituality
• Approaches from multiple avenues:
– Anatomy
– Electrophysiology
– Brain Imaging
– Genetics

22. Neurotheology
• Pinpoint which brain
regions turn on or off during
experiences that seem to
exist outside time and
space.
• Association areas in
cerebral cortex
– Visual
– Orientation
– Attention
– Verbal conceptual

23. Orientation Association Area
• Located posterior
section of parietal lobe
• Orients the body in
space; allows for 3D
sense of the body

24. Research
• Monks mediating, nuns praying
• SPECT scans before and at peak of experience
– prefrontal cortex (quieting of activity)
– “orientation association area”
• Determines where the body ends and the rest of the world begins.
• Sharp reduction in activity at peak of meditative experience 
brain perceives that the self is endless and intimately interwoven
with everyone and everything

25. Verbal descriptions of Experiences
“As the river flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it
Forgetting that they were ever separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separation
When they merge at last into”
Hindu Upanishads
“I possessed God so fully that I was no longer in my previous
customary state, but was led to find a peace in which I was
united with God and was content with everything”
Franciscan nun

26. Electrophysiology
• Epilepsy linked with spirituality throughout history
– “Sacred disease” by Greeks; demon possession in Bible
• Close to 5 % of patients with epilepsy report religious auras
• Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy have a heightened
response to religious language, specifically religious terms and
icons
• “Temporal lobe transients”
– bursts of electrical activity in the temporal lobes producing sensations
of out-of-body experiences, sense of the divine, finding God
• Increased activity in the attention association area (pre-
frontal cortex) during certain types of meditation

27. Genetics
• “Spirituality is among
the most ubiquitous
and powerful forces in
human life”
• Genes can predispose
us to believe.
• Don’t tell us WHAT to
believe

28. The God Gene
• Measuring spirituality
– “Self-transcendence scale”
• Cloninger, U Washington in St. Louis
• Out of system of personality classification called the
biosocial model
– Self-forgetfulness, transpersonal identification, mysticism
• Heritability
– Twin studies show that spirituality is significantly heritable
– Similar to many personality traits and greater than some
physical traits
– More heritability than religiosity

29. The God Gene
• Monoamines influence spirituality by altering
consciousness
– Serotonin, dopamine
– Blurring of the normal distinction of self and others
– Provided clue as to where to search for gene candidate
• Identifying a Gene
– Specific individual gene associated with self-transcendence
scale
– Codes for a monoamine transporter
– VMAT2 gene
• Makes protein that packages different monoamines into secretory
vehicles

30. The God Gene
• Selective Advantage
– Important role God gene plays in selective
advantage is to provide humans with an innate
sense of optimism
– Psychologically, optimism provides the will to live
and procreate
– Physically, optimism promotes better health and
quicker recovery from disease

31. Religion versus Science?
Science, especially
Geometry and
Astronomy was linked
directly to the divine
for medieval scholars.
The compass in this
13th C manuscript
is a symbol of creation
Third panel of “Education”
Tiffany glass, 1890
Science and Religion in harmony
Central personification of
“Light-Love-Life”
“Touching the Void”

32. Integrated View

33. Creativity, Spirituality and Mental Illness
• Artists and affective disorders
– Vincent van Gogh
– Edvard Munch
– Jackson Pollack
• Abstract Expressionist Artists of the NY School

34. In a Darwinian world, religious
behavior - just like other behaviors
- is likely to have undergone a
process of natural selection in
which it was rewarded in the
evolutionary currency of
reproductive success.

35. The phenomenon of human
religion is both pervasive and
mysterious. People have practiced
religion for at least 50,000 years,
far longer than agriculture and
written language. Despite a few
thousand years of philosophical
and scientific investigation into the
theories of religion, the origin and
purpose of religion remains
unexplained. Offered here is a
novel theory that is based on
empirical science and draws on
evolutionary biology to account for
religious behavior.

36. Could biology explain the evolution
of religion?

37. The Role of Religion and Spirituality in
the Resilience and Healing of African
Americans in Times of Trauma
Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Ph.D.
Rutgers University
Email: boydfrank@aol.com

38. Spirituality: Coping with Trauma
• Importance in African American
families
• Ask about spiritual beliefs
• Helps to cope with trauma and
loss
• Use of spiritual metaphors
• Instilling a sense of hope
• Spiritual resilience

39. 39
Resilience & Spiritual Messages after
Trauma
• God will see you through
• Thus far by faith
• African Americans are not strangers to
hardship, trauma and disaster
• Perseverance
• Healing
• Forgiveness
• Faith and Hope

40. Conclusions
• Religion/spirituality and its relationship to health and
illness is increasingly being discussed and
researched.
• Spiritual assessment is recommended as part of a
psychiatric evaluation.
• Much evidence demonstrates that the transcendent
states from which religions arise are neurologically
real

41. Conclusions
• Religion and Science do not have to be in
opposition or incompatible
• Evidence suggests that the deepest origins of
religions are based in mystical experience
– Religions persist because the wiring of the human
brain continues to provide believers with a range
of experiences that are interpreted as assurances
that God exists

42. Conclusions

43. Conclusions
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as
though nothing is a miracle; the other is as
though everything is a miracle”
Albert Einstein

44. Conclusions
“We are not physical
creatures having a
spiritual experience.
We are spiritual
creatures having a
physical experience”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1881-1955)
French philosopher, Jesuit
priest, palentologist and
geologist