Glen Milstein

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at City College of New York

As a foundation of most cultures, with roots in persons’ early development, religion can be a source of hope as well as denigration. Some religious institutions have made attempts to help persons with mental health problems, and some mental health professionals have sought to engage religion resources. These programs have rarely been sustained. In...

he counsellor has an ethical obligation to treat the whole person. Humans are cultural beings and the foundation of most cultures is religion. Religion and culture are received from our early relationships and modified through later relationships across the lifespan. The paper introduces the term “culture ontogeny” to emphasize that this is a biolo...

The purpose of this paper is to describe to psychologists and other clinicians a continuum of mental health care for persons of diverse religions. The continuum delineates boundaries between clinical care provided by mental health professionals and religious care provided by clergy, as well as describes pathways of collaboration across these bounda...

W Wo or rl ld d P Ps sy yc ch hi ia at tr ry y 4 4: :S S1 1-September 2005 The clergy's role in reducing stigma: a bilingual study of elder patients' views Social stigma associated with mental illness is a societal process whereby public attitudes toward persons with mental disorders range from stereotyping to discriminatory behaviors. As a consequ...

Chaplains play important roles in caring for Veterans and Service members with mental health problems. As part of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Department of Defense (DoD) Integrated Mental Health Strategy, we used a sequential approach to examining intersections between chaplaincy and mental health by gathering and building upon: 1)...

Both religious change and religious continuity are associated with stronger levels of religiosity in the laity. Yet, little is known about how they affect the clergy. This study examines the effects of both religious change and continuity on the spiritual well-being of clergy. Using longitudinal data of United Methodist Church (UMC) leaders in the...

Maintaining healthy behaviors is challenging. Based upon previous reports that in North Carolina (NC), USA, overweight/obese clergy lost weight during a two-year religiously tailored health intervention, we described trajectories of diet, physical activity, and sleep. We investigated whether behavior changes were associated with weight and use of h...

The success of service members’ transition from military to civilian life is an ongoing concern for their personal well-being, for their families, and for our communities. There is a need for interventions to promote improved social integration. This one-arm feasibility study examined the ease of use, satisfaction, and desire for social interaction...

The success of service members’ transition from military to civilian life is an ongoing concern for their personal well-being, for their families, and for our communities. There is a need for interventions to promote improved social integration. This one-arm feasibility study examined the ease of use, satisfaction, and desire for social interaction...

Religion is a salient part of cultural competence for mental health clinicians. This paper describes rationales for clinicians to work with a less well-known Catholic clergy: permanent deacons. Demographic, personality structure and religious commitment data from nearly 2,000 deacons support collaboration with clinicians to improve the continuity o...

The population of religious “nones,” those who do not affiliate with any religion, is continually growing. Many of those who identify as nones have exited from religious traditions. Sparse research has examined the psychological processes involved in religious exit. Although various theories of religious exit have been proposed, they have provided...

This study explored psychological variables associated with disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism (a covenantal community), and subsequent wellness. A web-based survey (N = 206) assessed factors previously used to study immigrants: push (distress within origin community), pull (toward destination community), and goal attainment. Psychological wellne...

This paper investigates the mental health promotion and protection (MHPP) model of reducing depression. Data are from the Clergy Health Initiative Longitudinal Survey of United Methodist ministers in North Carolina that included the Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) for positive mental health and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) f...

This study explored psychological variables associated with disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism (a covenantal community), and subsequent wellness. A web-based survey (N = 206) assessed factors previously used to study immigrants: push (distress within origin community), pull (toward destination community), and goal attainment. Psychological and em...

People often seek counsel from clergy before they seek help from mental health professionals. There is a need for clergy to have a way to make referrals to clinicians, and for clinicians to have a familiarity with the multiple roles of clergy and religion. Collaboration between clinicians and religious congregations provides a way to initiate and s...

This special section in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy: “Religion and Spirituality in the Context of Disaster,” demonstrates the heterogeneity and complexities of religion as a variable of psychological resilience in response to disaster. Research from hurricane, flood, and mass shooting disasters are reported. So too...

Religion is a source of beliefs and practices, which can in turn influence health behaviors. Therefore, religious communities represent potential public health partners to improve well-being across economic and ethnic diversity. This issue of the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community presents six empirical studies with a breadth of...

Work, when stressful, can be dispiriting. There are bidirectional and longitudinal links between occupational stress and depressive symptoms. Also, higher levels of religious participation are associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms and work distress. Some have argued that religious participation is a proxy for social support, rather th...

Communities form individuals, and individuals form communities. It is a journey of lifespan reciprocity: From our earliest ages and stages we need our communities to guide us and challenge us, to nurture us and toughen us, to give us roots and wings, and to finally give us the chance to become those who teach the next generations to thrive. This jo...

We studied a new intervention targeted to returning service members and veterans to assist readjustment and reintegration. This self-guided interactive dialogue facilitates talking about one’s military experiences: first with fellow service members or fellow veterans, then with friends and family. The 299 soldiers reported significantly positive sa...

The public’s attitude toward immigration is a foundation of public policy development. The challenge for researchers is to calculate a national average for this controversial subject from the public’s multiple attitudes. For nineteen of the past twenty years at least one of several national opinion surveys in the United States asked respondents to...

According to Ronan and Johnston (2005) the number of people who will experience a disaster will double by 2050 from one billion people to two billion people. Since 1985 there has been an almost 400% increase in global natural disasters (Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 2007). Researchers managing the global terrorism database r...

Imams are Muslim clergy whose community members rely on them for help with life stresses, and therefore play a significant role in addressing the counseling needs of the growing Muslim communities in the United States. We studied if imams could recognize mental illness and would be willing to make referrals. We mailed a questionnaire to a nationwid...

Objective: Muslims are one of the most rapidly growing minority groups in the United States and have experienced increased stress since September 11, 2001. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the roles of imams, Islamic clergy, in meeting the counseling needs of their communities. Methods: An anonymous self-report questionnaire was mailed to...

There are over 260,000 religious congregations in the United States. They and their clergy are de facto providers of mental health care. Recent models promoting collaboration between clergy and psychologists advocate that shared religious values underlie effective working relationships. This view may impede collaboration with the majority of psycho...

To review the need for reading assessments for patients with cancer, review existing reading assessment tools, and make a case for a new tool specific to patients with cancer. Published articles, experiences, and discussions with published authors in the field of literacy. Valid and reliable tools that assess word recognition and comprehension exis...

Muslims are one of the most rapidly growing minority groups in the United States and have experienced increased stress since September 11, 2001. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the roles of imams, Islamic clergy, in meeting the counseling needs of their communities. An anonymous self-report questionnaire was mailed to 730 mosques across...

Should geriatric psychiatrists consider religion salient to their clinical care and research? These books make it clear that religion is not a single attribute practiced uniformly across different populations and leading to the same mental and physical outcomes. Yet, they demonstrate that we must each evaluate the inclusion of religion in our work...

To examine the relationship between religious practice and depression in a sample of geriatric patients receiving homecare nursing services. Patients were sampled weekly for six months from all those aged 65 to 102, and newly enrolled in a visiting nurse agency (N = 130). Depression was assessed by home interviews using the SCID and HRSD. Patients...

Thus, insofar as it is possible--and all of us fail now and then when one of our private interests is touched upon--the psychiatrist remembers that his role is that of an expert. --Harry Stack Sullivan, The Psychiatric Interview (1954, p36) On Oct. 20, 2000, the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Medical College and the World Psychiatric As...

W Wo or rl ld d P Ps sy yc ch hi ia at tr ry y 4 4: :S S1 1-September 2005 The clergy's role in reducing stigma: a bilingual study of elder patients' views Social stigma associated with mental illness is a societal process whereby public attitudes toward persons with mental disorders range from stereotyping to discriminatory behaviors. As a consequ...

This study measured distinctions made by a sample of clergy and mental health professionals in response to three categories of presenting problems with religious content: mental disorder, religious or spiritual problem, and "pure" religious problem. A national, random sample of rabbis (N = 111) and clinical psychologists (N = 90) provided evaluatio...

This study measured distinctions made by a sample of clergy and mental health professionals in response to three categories of presenting problems with religious content: mental disorder, religious or spiritual problem, and "pure" religious problem. A national, random sample of rabbis (N = 111) and clinical psychologists (N = 90) provided evaluatio...

The occupational responsibilities of clergy and mental health professionals overlap: people bring psychological problems to their clergy, and religious issues to their psychotherapists. Therefore, clergy and clinicians need to distinguish psychological dysfunction from religious concerns. Additionally, the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Stati...

Among Hispanics, the family is viewed as the primary care giver for seriously mentally ill family members. This paper reports on a study of minority families' conceptions of serious mental illness, of their interaction with mental health resources, and on the burdens experienced by families in caring for a seriously mentally ill family member. The...

Data on cerebral specialization derived from studies of human head-injuries have long implicated the left hemisphere's critical role in speech processing and verbal memory. We report a relatively simple paradigm which demonstrates an analogous asymmetry in narrative recall performance in normal subjects when either one hemisphere or the other is co...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-166). Department: Teacher College.