RHEAL · Religion and Healing: Collaborative and Participatory Methodologies

RHEAL investigates innovative interdisciplinary methodologies for fostering collaboration between researchers, healthcare professionals, religious and traditional healers, people with lived experience of mental health conditions, and their carers. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary approaches of anthropology, creative arts, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, RHEAL addresses pressing issues in mental health by investigating how different therapeutic approaches can better communicate to improve care and knowledge exchange. Focussing on mental health and practices of spiritual trance and possession, this project aims to bridge the epistemological divide between biomedical and religious/spiritual and traditional perspectives, identifying best practices for cooperation in healing. In order to achieve this scientific breakthrough, RHEAL draws upon the methodologies of ethnography, micro-phenomenology, and creative participatory approaches to develop co-designed, person-centred knowledge transfer models. Visual arts and multimodal approaches – including participatory video, photography, and sensory engagement – are used to access lived and embodied experiences of healing, in order to rethink the production of knowledge about healing cooperation through the sensorial engagement in everyday life with materialities and images, and encourage inclusive, sustainable and collaborative policies. In bringing together the fields of humanities, life and social sciences, RHEAL aims to create an interdisciplinary, applied methodological toolkit for mental healthcare research and practice. By advancing innovative practices of healing cooperation, it seeks to inform sustainable healthcare policies and contribute to the global discourse on integrative healing. By 'sustainability’, RHEAL intends to work towards systems that are inclusive of the person’s experiences and traditional knowledge, and able to accommodate side by side different epistemologies and therapeutic approaches.