ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical analysis of Buddhist and Buddhist-inspired Psychologies and mental health practices as they intersect ethnicity, gender, religion and transnational cultures. It focuses on the beliefs, practices, and experiences of culturally main branches of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism and their relationship to mental health. The chapter discusses how Buddhists understand physical and mental illness, and what treatments they believe promote health in ways thought to transcend race, gender and culture. It includes a few short case vignettes to illustrate how beliefs, values, practices, and experiences of Buddhists can promote mental health, both as stand-alone practices and as coordinated with Western mental health services. M. Haslam considers herself a survivor of New Kadampa Tradition practice. She believes that very vulnerable people are given unsafe and damaging practices at an inappropriate time, because it encourages them to feel nothing, or that ‘an impure mind perceives an impure world’ making them to blame for their suffering.
