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This paper situates Sikh identity, spirituality, and recovery from alcohol addiction within a nexus of complex social, psychological, and cultural factors. The way in which affected people in Sikh communities in Britain are able to locate and utilize unofficial recovery trajectories, often successfully alleviating suffering, presents both academic research and service provision with potential puzzles. While Sikh communities have been long settled in the UK, there is still a dearth of extensive, multi-method, and analytically rich research investigating the role of spirituality and Sikh identity. We present existing models of recovery process and locate them against an individual psychological and sociological backdrop, so that through the use of spirituality, recovery along this route is interpreted as having both otherworldly as well as materially grounded formations. It is this duality, we argue, that is prominent socially, culturally, and psychologically as important in the recovery from addiction. The multi-factorial nature of this mechanism of change raises important questions for not only addiction recovery, but also notions of continuity and change in Sikh identity. We aim to contribute to this growing body of work in order to re-situate the role of spirituality and identity in alcohol addiction recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and development in the field of sight loss and provision for visual impairment among black and minority ethnic groups in Britain is poorly developed. There are real and inexcusable inequalities in access to services for people from minority ethnic communities, and a distinct lack of knowledge about the issues involved among both sight-loss service-providing bodies who are relatively uninformed about ethnic and cultural diversity, and among black and minority ethnic communities in respect of sight loss and provision to meet the needs of visually impaired people. The article, based on systematic review of published and ‘grey’ literature and action research, describes some key issues which might be taken into account to ensure that the gulf between these two silos of information and experience may be bridged, and insists that so-called ‘colour-blind practice’ is not acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The research presented aimed to explore and elucidate religious and spiritual elements involved in the change process for South Asian men overcoming alcohol problems. In-depth interviews with 15 Sikh men who had either accessed counselling services, and/or used religious/spiritual strategies to overcome an alcohol problem were carried out. A grounded theory approach was used to analyse the data. Change was seen to occur within a holistic framework, impacting on many levels of the person and their context. A model of behaviour change was developed identifying 3 phases of change labelled as catalyst, commitment, and maintenance within which specific religious and spiritual change processes took place. The findings have important implications for the provision of culturally appropriate alcohol treatment services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]