Leveraging the Deliverance Phenomenon: Penteco/Charismatic Vista

"His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God": Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity

Some Christian communities may understand mental illness as the result of spiritual causes, such as sin, demons, or a lack of faith. Such perceptions are likely to influence how Christian individuals conceptualise and experience their mental health and enact help-seeking behaviours. This study explores perceptions of depression and mental health help-seeking in evangelical Christianity by using a novel qualitative story completion task. A convenience sample of 110 Christian participants from the United Kingdom completed a third-person, fictional story stem featuring a male with depression who entered his local church. A contextualist-informed thematic analysis illustrated how the disclosure of depression was represented as eliciting negative social reactions, potentially rendering individuals with depression as socially dislocated. Stories suggested that, increasingly, evangelical Christians may perceive a spiritualisation of mental illness, which negates reference to psychological, social, and biomedical representations, as unhelpful. Findings reveal the risks of a solely spiritual aetiology of depression and highlight how existing mental ill-health can be exacerbated if fundamentalist beliefs and approaches to therapeutic care are prioritised over holistic models of care. Methodologically, this study demonstrates the value of a rarely-used tool in psychology—the story completion task—for examining socio-cultural discourses and dominant meanings surrounding stigmatised topics or populations.

Spirituality and subjective well-being among Ghanaian older adults: optimism and meaning in life as mediators

OBJECTIVE

This cross-sectional study investigated the relationship between spirituality and subjective well-being (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction), and whether this relationship is mediated by optimism and meaning in life.

METHOD

Participants were 235 older adults (≥60 years) conveniently sampled from Ghanaian communities. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the direct and indirect relationships. Sobel test was also used to test specific mediating effects of optimism and meaning in life.

RESULTS

Spirituality was positively related with positive affect and life satisfaction, but negatively related with negative affect. The SEM results revealed that the relationship between spirituality and subjective well-being was indirect. Sobel test showed that the mediating effect of optimism was only statistically significant for negative affect but not positive affect and life satisfaction. In contrast, the mediating effect of meaning in life was statistically significant for the three components of subjective well-being.

CONCLUSION

The study has demonstrated that spirituality indirectly influences subjective well-being through optimism and meaning in life. It also showed the relative importance of meaning in life over optimism as a mediator. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings have been discussed.

Reviewing the Common Barriers to the Mental Healthcare Delivery in Africa

The current paper sought to thematically present common challenges associated with mental healthcare services in Africa. We largely limited our search for literature materials to studies published from 2003 to 2019 in African countries from which the findings showed that there are common challenges confronting mental healthcare services in Africa. The challenges include: inadequate mental healthcare facilities, funding constraints, shortage of professional healthcare workers, inadequate training and development scheme for mental health workers and weak mental healthcare policies. Implications for policy and practice are disclosed and recommendations are stated to trigger actions to remedy the situation. This information is beneficial for researchers, policymakers, mental healthcare providers and community members who are interested in mental healthcare issues. It was concluded that in order for Africa to enjoy successful mental healthcare service, critical and enduring attention must focus on sound and enforceable government policy on mental healthcare service, provision of adequate and regular funding, availability of adequate mental healthcare facilities, provision of training and development facilities for the mental health professionals and collaboration of mental healthcare providers.

The Role of the Penteco/Charismatic Clergy in the Political Health Development in Ghana

Several countries in Africa are perpetually linked to an inexpungable history of cyclical ethnic conflicts, violence and coup d'état which culminated in the untimely death of many, others severely wounded and many left in a hopeless situation. The paper discusses in-depth, the role and functions of the clergy (ministers of religion) in the political health development in Ghana. The rationale is that the clergy's esteemed status among the church members and the society as a whole could impact positively on the lives of the people in the society, and for that matter, they are expected to speak to national issues. Twenty-one clergy participated in one-on-one in-depth interviews for this study. It was found out that a number of the ministers of religion were not interested in political health development issues, and therefore, their roles in politics were woefully inadequate. It is recommended that the clergy boldly take up their leadership responsibilities and provide a framework for collaboration and reconciliation in the peace-building process and also be models of a peaceful disposition. The clergy are to continue to pray fervently, advise politicians and educate their church members for a sound political health development in Ghana.