Intersections of Religiousness/Spirituality and Forgiveness and Implications for Mental Health and Well-Being

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is focused on forgiveness, religiosity, and mental health. The WHO states that mental health enables individuals to realize their potential, manage stress, and be productive. Forgiveness—defined as a prosocial change in thoughts, emotions, motivations, and behaviour—allows us to move from negative states and stress responses to neutral or even positive states that are relevant to mental health (Griffin et al., 2015). However, religiosity is generally acknowledged as an individual's personal perception and attitude towards God and the supernatural, which is demonstrated in their thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviours (Golan, 2006), helping people to cope with stress and find meaning in life.

As previous research has demonstrated, both forgiveness and religiosity may be important for mental health. For example, forgiveness may be one of the predictors associated with greater psychological well-being (Kaleta & Mróz, 2018) and productivity in work (Toussaint et al., 2018), and fewer symptoms associated with depression, anxiety (Wade et al., 2014), and insomnia (Iverno et al., 2022). Moreover, religiosity (conceptualized in different ways) is linked to aspects of mental health, such as fewer post-traumatic stress symptoms (Toussaint et al., 2023), less suicidal tendencies (VanderWeele et al., 2016), substance abuse (Yonker et al., 2012), and higher life satisfaction (Sholihin et al., 2022). Therefore, forgiveness, religiosity, and mental health may be topics of interest for many professionals who seek predictors of optimal psychological functioning.

This Special Issue aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum for theoretical and empirical examples of current research, with an aim to search for links between forgiveness and mental health. 

Potential topics include the following:

• Forgiveness and well-being;
• Religiosity and well-being;
• Trauma and forgiveness;
• Forgiveness, religiosity, and depression;
• Self-forgiveness and mental health;
• Forgiveness therapy;
• Forgiveness and PTSD;
• Religious perspectives on forgiveness;
• Faith as a mediator between forgiveness and mental health;
• Religious practices, religious commitment, and mental health;
• Religious coping and PTG;
• Forgiveness as a mediator between religiousness and mental health;
• Divine forgiveness, religiousness/spirituality, and mental health;
• Forgiveness psychoeducation and mental health,
• Religious aspects of decisional and emotional forgiveness and mental health,
• Religiousness/spirituality, stress-and-coping theory of forgiveness and mental health,
• Relational spirituality model of forgiveness and mental health.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Justyna Mróz
Prof. Dr. Loren Toussaint
Dr. Kinga Kaleta
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• forgiveness
• mental health
• well-being
• self-forgiveness
• personal resources
• faith
• religiosity
• trauma