Ira Helderman PhD, LPC (Adjunct Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Vanderbilt University; PhD, Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, 2016) studies how psychotherapists' definitions of what is and is not religious shape their understandings of caregiving, health, and illness. His first book, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press 2019), is the first comprehensive examination of the surprisingly diverse ways that psychotherapists have approached Buddhist traditions. Helderman publishes in peer-reviewed journals such as The Journal of the American Academy of Religion and, committed to public scholarship, writes regularly for popular publications such as Psychology Today, Religion Dispatches, and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Dr. Helderman is also a practicing psychotherapist and clinical supervisor who has worked in the mental health field for over 20 years in a variety of clinical settings from in-patient addiction treatment centers and psychiatric hospitals to his current private practice.

Helderman is currently studying the widespread psychotherapeutic use of Buddhist meditation. Though meditation is often described by patients as a way of easing spiritual yearning, it can also generate "adverse effects" like agitation, traumatic memories, and hallucinations. Dr. Helderman will examine how psychotherapists have conducted a "differential diagnosis" of such cases—distinguishing spiritual experience from psychopathology—and showing that how we define what is and is not "religious" shapes the fields of mental health, psychology, and religious studies.

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