Varieties of Religious (Non)Affiliation: A Primer for Mental Health Practitioners on the "Spiritual but Not Religious" and the "Nones".

Given changing demographics of religiosity and spirituality, this article aims to help clinicians understand contemporary trends in patient religious and spiritual orientation. It first identifies and describes the evolving varieties of religio-spiritual orientation and affiliation, as identified in survey studies. Particular attention is given to the examination of those who identify as spiritual but not religious (SBNR) and None (i.e., no religious affiliation), which is important to mental health practice because many patients now identify as SBNR or None. Next, empirical data are considered, including what the literature reveals regarding mental health outcomes and SBNRs and Nones. We conclude with a summary of the main points and five recommendations that mental health practitioners and researchers need to consider regarding this increasingly large portion of the population.

Religion and Psychiatry in the Age of Neuroscience.

In recent decades, an evolving conversation among religion, psychiatry, and neuroscience has been taking place, transforming how we conceptualize religion and how that conceptualization affects its relation to psychiatry. In this article, we review several dimensions of the dialogue, beginning with its history and the phenomenology of religious experience. We then turn to neuroscientific studies to see how they explain religious experience, and we follow that with two related areas: the benefits of religious beliefs and practices, and the evolutionary foundation of those benefits. A final section addresses neuroscientific and evolutionary accounts of the transcendent, that is, what these fields make of the claim that religious experience connects to a transcendent reality. We conclude with a brief summary, along with the unresolved questions we have encountered.