Religious and ethnic group inuences on beliefs about mental illness: A qualitative interview study Marco Cinnirella* and Kate Miriam Loewenthal Royal Holloway, University of London, UK An in-depth qualitative interview study is reported, with respondents (N =52; all female) from the following urban-dwelling religious groups: White Christian, Pakis- tani Muslim, Indian Hindu, Orthodox Jewish and Afro-Caribbean Christian. Qualita- tive thematic analysis of open-ended interview responses revealed that the degree to which religious coping strategies were perceived to be effective in the face of depressive and schizophrenic symptoms, varied across the groups, with prayer being perceived as particularly effective among Afro-Caribbean Christian and Pakistani Muslim groups. Across all non-white groups, and also for the Jewish group, there was fear of being misunderstood by outgroup health professionals, and among Afro-Caribbean Christian and Pakistani Muslim participants, evidence of a community stigma associated with mental illness, leading to a preference for private coping strategies. The results lend further support to recent calls for ethnic-specic mental health service provision and highlightthe utility of qualitativemethodologyfor exploringthe link between religion and lay beliefs about mental illness. It has been suggested that more needs to be known about the mental beliefs of members of different cultural and social groups in order to achieve more effective liaison and help (Ball, 1995; Mitchell, 1995; Zane, Hatanka, Park & Akatsu, 1994). In particular, little is known about the nature and effects of religiously-based beliefs about the causes and cures of mental illness, and these need to be understood and taken into account in formulating appropriate care. Religious-cultural communities also tend to foster stereotypical beliefs about health professionals such as general practitioners (GPs) and social workers (Nickerson, Helms & Terrell, 1994), and a further aim is to examine how such beliefs impact on uptake and non-uptake of services. This paper reports an interview study focusing on beliefs about mental health, its causes and cures, coping and help-seeking, and stereotypes of health professionals, in ve different cultural-religious groups in Britain. Some relevant social cognitions have been studied in the general British population 505 British Journal of Medical Psychology (1999), 72, 505–524 Printed in Great Britain © 1999 The British Psychological Society *Requests for reprints should be addressed to Marco Cinnirella, Psychology Department, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK (e-mail: m.cinnirella@rhbnc.ac.uk). Note: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium on Religious issues in mental health among minority groups: Issues in Britain in the 1990s . 27 November, 1996, Applied Psychology Research Group, Psychology Department, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK