Bridging the spirituality gap

An identifiable ‘spirituality gap’ exists between the lived experience of mental health difficulties, frequently spoken of in spiritual terms, and the professional expertise of mental health practitioners from whom we might seek help. This paper contrasts the lived experience of suicidality with the academic and professional discipline of suicidology to show that this gap arises from a scientific commitment to objective knowledge that denies subjective knowledge, therefore excluding spirituality. A brief excursion into some contemporary thinking in Consciousness Studies illustrates that this scientific denial of the subjective, and of spirit, is obsolete, based more on ideological dogma than reason, and no longer tenable. The paper concludes with a call for ‘first-person data’ and ‘first-person methods’ – in the jargon of mental health, the ‘consumer’ voice – to be attended to in order to bridge the spirituality gap.