Social isolation, deliberate or imposed, connects the conditions associated with both psychosis and transcendental experiences.While all religions are rooted in and celebrate spirituality, many people report a spiritual dimension to their lives, without any declared allegiance to a faith group.Thus, a distinction can be made between spiritual experience and religious belief, even if, for many people, these may remain subjectively intertwined.Spiritual experience is subjectively focused and typically has few or no behavioural implications, beyond the subtle and idiosyncratic.A third ambiguity is that religious affiliation can have mental health consequences, which may say more about group membership than spirituality per se.It is clear that their political disaffection with Western materialism and their strong small group affiliation reinforce a coherent and meaningful sense of identity.In other words, in this case, religion, not spirituality, seems to have a positive psychological function for the individuals, about a proud identity, even if the consequence for others is lethal.And, although major faiths do not argue that mass murder is a noble expression of spiritual life, historically violence has been justified recurrently by religious grievance or crusading evangelism.Health benefits flow from this – religious affiliation is linked to measurable reductions in both morbidity and mortality.Thus, religion provides purpose and comfort, about the vagaries of life and death, and offers one source of social capital.By contrast, spirituality does not necessarily implicate social capital – indeed, it may be associated with social isolation.For example, some of the most dramatic accounts of spiritual experience are about people in their own idiosyncratic existential space.This transcendental or mystical realm is what Freud, a materialist and atheist, called the Oceanic Experience, when the boundaries of the ego dissolve in dreams and madness or in spiritual experiences.As far as hallucinatory experiences are concerned, we can add Paul on the road to Damascus and Moses seeing the burning bush.Both involve an alternative consciousness, though in the first case this can go on for months or years, whereas spiritual experiences tend to be fleeting.Also, psychosis emerges often without apparent warning, whereas the conditions of possibility for spiritual experiences involve deliberate elicitation rituals of isolation, emotional arousal, extraordinary social isolation or drug use.By contrast, the psychotic patient may or may not come back from this journey of crossing liminality.In the first case, psychotic patients often eschew others and others may shun them in turn, creating a vicious circle of personal alienation.In the case of the mystical aspects of religion, social isolation is created more deliberately and even ritualised.The disciplinary regimes of nuns and monks demand degrees of physical isolation from open society and its norms.These routines create social constriction.Within that constriction, depending on the extent of the rituals required, the individual becomes further isolated during periods of silent contemplation, prayer or meditation.These create the personal context for extraordinary experiences, as social isolation increases the probability of hallucinations and strengthens a commitment to belief systems, unchallenged by contrary viewpoints in open society.A final point to note about spirituality is that it offers a fourth dimension to mental health.Spirituality and religious affiliation offer a potential source of hope for those with mental health problems and protect many people from these problems or reduce their experienced impact.The combination of values and evidence to generate measures that could create a mentally healthy society.The rationale of public mental health is outlined.Improvements in wellbeing and the prevention of mental health problems are discussed.A public mental health agenda is concerned with how individuals, families, organisations and communities think and feel, individually and collectively, and the attendant impact that this may have on overall mental health and wellbeing in society.Concerns about public mental health have arrived relatively late on the policy scene but in the past decade wellbeing and the prevention of mental disorders have acquired more political interest.Contributing to this recent interest, economists, psychiatrists and psychologists have introduced the notion that happiness should be a central political concern.The latter article notes that realistic predictions about life arise from a slightly depressive rather than happy personal outlook.The prevention of mental disorder and promotion of positive mental health.The promotion of full citizenship for those who have experienced mental health problems.The promotion of wellbeing and the reduction in inequalities about it.The interaction of physical and mental health.The logic of public mental health has little to do with mental health services.All public policies affecting peace, stability, social cohesion, child rearing, relative inequality and personal security can affect the success of public mental health as a political aspiration.Like mental health, mental health promotion has been defined in a variety of ways.Common or recurring strands include the promotion of happiness, the right to freedom and productivity, the absence of mental illness, and the fulfilment of an individuals emotional, intellectual and spiritual potential.The relationship between mental health promotion and the primary prevention of mental illness is considered.The range of factors which are implicated in both of these closely related concepts is outlined.The promotion of mental health is closely linked to the primary prevention of mental health problems.The subtle distinction is that in the former case, positive mental health has to be defined as one or more desired outcomes.In the latter case, there needs to be a demonstration that the probability of diagnosed mental illness is reduced.The primary prevention of mental illness can be distinguished from secondary and tertiary prevention.Secondary prevention refers to nipping mental health problems in the bud following early detection.Tertiary prevention refers to lowering the probability of relapse in those with chronic mental health problems.In the entry on social class, it is noted that stress accounts for some of the differences in diagnosis between poorer and richer people.A problem for the human sciences is that they are intrinsically about human relationships.Social support This is a crucial buffer against mental health problems.