Blurb:

The epidemic of mental illness has become a global crisis. The World Health Organization estimates that one in eight individuals—or almost a billion people—around the world experienced mental illness in 2019, often without access to adequate therapeutic treatment. In an era that prizes empirically verifiable evidence-based treatments, it is puzzling that much of what constitutes psychopathology (and its etiology) is a mystery. There is so much that remains unknown about mental illness, yet the mainstream systems continue with business as usual, without giving proper attention to this fundament quandary, let alone the dangers of unleashing, on tens of millions of people, a massive arsenal of prescribed psychotropic medications that are often far from helpful to them. Modern science has failed to fathom psychosis. In order to better grasp its nature, modernist understandings of this phenomenon (and other extreme states of mind) are contrasted with spiritual approaches as illuminated by the world’s religions.