PURPOSE Religion is frequently ignored within the clinical domain. Yet when examined, empirical evidence indicates that specific aspects of religiosity are correlated with mental health. The established associations between religious dimensions and mental health could be mediated by cognitive-behavioural mechanisms. This paper proposes a preliminary conceptual framework in which two types of co...

Collective decision making involves on the one hand individual mental states such as beliefs, emotions and intentions, and on the other hand interaction with others with possibly different mental states. Achieving a satisfactory common group decision on which all agree requires that such mental states are adapted to each other by social interaction. Recent developments in Social Neuroscience ha...

Background Following the tenets of world polity and innovation diffusion theories, I focus on the coercive and mimetic forces that influence the diffusion of mental health policy across nations. International organizations’ mandates influence government behavior. Dependency on external resources, namely foreign aid, also affects governments’ formulation of national policy. And finally, mounting...

Resource-poor social environments predict poor health, but the mechanisms and processes linking the social environment to psychological health and well-being remain unclear. This study explored psychosocial mediators of the association between the social environment and mental health in African American adults. African American men and women (n = 1467) completed questionnaires on the social env...

Mental and physical efforts, such as paying attention and lifting weights, have been shown to involve different brain systems. These cognitive and motor systems, respectively, include cortical networks (prefronto-parietal and precentral regions) as well as subregions of the dorsal basal ganglia (caudate and putamen). Both systems appeared sensitive to incentive motivation: their activity increa...

Psychology needs a metric for positive mental health that would be analogous to the IQ tests that measure above-average intelligence. The Defensive Function Scale of the DSM-IV offers a possible metric. In the present article the author links the transformational qualities of defenses at the mature end of the Defensive Function Scale--altruism, suppression, humor, anticipation, and sublimation-...

This brief review discusses the ties between the endocrine, immune and nervous systems, which support the merging of mental and physical health concepts and health care. Mental and physical health’s are dependent on multidirectional interactions of the neuroendocrine immune network. Communications among neuronal connections within the central nervous system (CNS) regulate our behaviors, cogniti...

The neuroscience of exercise is a growing research area that is dedicated to furthering our understanding of the effects that exercise has on mental health and athletic performance. The present study examined three specific topics: (1) the relationship between exercise and mental disorders (e.g. major depressive disorder, dementia and Parkinson's disease), (2) the effects of exercise on the moo...