LAUSR

This special section of the Journal of Religion and Health derives from a workshop held in July 2017 at the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona, Switzerland. Ascona is by the side of Lago Maggiore, close to the Italian border, and the Centro is set in a beautiful garden overlooking the lake (Fig. 1). It is a small private anthropological research centre which was set up some years ago by Angela Hobart in her family home in Ascona, Switzerland, in memory of her parents. It hosts visiting scholars, and holds conferences, workshops, and other activities. This workshop was organised jointly by the Centro Incontri Umani and by Geoffrey Samuel and Susannah Deane of the Body, Health and Religion (BAHAR) Research Group, Cardiff University. Deane had recently completed her Ph.D. at Cardiff University under Samuel’s supervision, and we wanted to explore some of the wider implications of Deane’s and Samuel’s work on Tibetan psychiatry in an open and cross-disciplinary context where we had the opportunity for extended discussion and genuine dialogue. We were very fortunate in our group of participants, not all of whom are represented in this special section, but all of whom contributed to the ongoing discussion. In addition to those who are included in this collection, Sonu Shamdasani and Güzin Yener also presented papers, while Maggie Baron, Betina Hermes, Angela Hobart, Maya Hobart, David Nugent, Santi Rozario, and TsungHan Tsai attended some or all of the sessions. We particularly wish to acknowledge the support of Angela Hobart, director of the Centro, who both hosted the workshop and participated deeply and generously in our discussions. The articles, which were written and developed in dialogue, cover a series of mutually related topics. They highlight the differences between Tibetan and Western approaches to both mental (or psychiatric) illness and mental health, but also ways in which they might illuminate each other, leading perhaps to a more