An increasing number of people in Western societies are making active use of the ever-growing range of spiritual guidance and practices. While spiritual practices, beliefs and group affiliations can have a variety of health and growth-promoting effects, certain risk factors and detrimental contextual conditions can also lead to problematic or even crisis-ridden psychological processes. Over the past three decades, such problems and crises in the context of spiritual development, orientation and practice have increasingly become the focus of clinical psychotherapeutic interest under terms such as “spiritual crises”, “crises of consciousness development”, “transformative, transpersonal or emergent crises” or even the “negative effects of meditation”.
The research focus “Health risks of spiritual practices” is dedicated to the following questions:
