Spirituality In Mental Health Practice

This key text presents an accessible and diverse exploration of spirituality in mental health practice, broadening the definition of spirituality to comprise a variety of transcendent experiences. Chapters include a brief history of the tensions of spirituality in mental health practice and consider a range of emerging topics, from spirituality among the elderly and energy work (Reiki), to spirituality in addiction recovery, incarceration, and hospice work. The book offers a close examination of the limits of the medical model of care, making a case for a more spiritually sensitive practice. Rich case examples are woven throughout, and the book is paired with podcasts that can be applied across chapters, illuminating the narrative stories and building active listening and teaching skills. Suitable for students of social work and counseling at master's level, as well as practicing clinicians, Spirituality in Mental Health Practice is an essential text for widening our understanding of how spiritual frameworks can enrich mental health practice.

Religiosity and spirituality (R/S) represent a very important factor of daily life for many individuals across different cultures and contexts. It is associated with lower rates of depression, suicide, mortality, and substance abuse, and is positively correlated with well-being and quality of life. Despite growing academic recognition and scientific literature on these connections this knowledge has not been translated into clinical practice. Part of the expanding Oxford Cultural Psychiatry series, Spirituality and Mental Health Across Cultures is a timely exploration of the implications of R/S on mental health. Written and edited by 38 experts in the fields of spirituality and mental health from 11 countries, covering a wide range of cultural and geographical perspectives, this unique resource assesses how mental health relates to world religions, agnosticism, atheism, and spiritualism unaffiliated with organised religion, with a practical touch. Across 25 chapters, this resource provides readers with a succinct and trustworthy review of the latest research and how this can be applied to clinical care. The first section covers the principles and fundamental questions that relate science, history, philosophy, neuroscience, religion, and spirituality with mental health. The second section discusses the main beliefs and practices related to world religions and their implications to mental health. The third reviews the impact of R/S on specific clinical situations and offers practical guidance on how to handle these appropriately, such as practical suggestions for assessing and integrating R/S in personal history anamnesis or psychotherapy.

Spirituality often plays a critical role in health and wellness, yet few have explored in detail the process through which practitioners can identify and use clients' spiritual strengths to their mutual advantage. To address this gap, this practice-oriented text equips helping professionals with the tools they need to administer spiritual assessments ethically and professionally. David R. Hodge outlines a number of assessment approaches, including an implicit method for evaluating "secular" forms of spirituality. Case examples illustrate the implementation of these strategies in different clinical settings and with groups from diverse racial, geographic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Spirituality and Psychiatry addresses the crucial but often overlooked relevance of spirituality to mental well-being and psychiatric care. This updated and expanded second edition explores the nature of spirituality, its relationship to religion, and the reasons for its importance in clinical practice. Contributors discuss the prevention and management of illness, and the maintenance of recovery. Different chapters focus on the subspecialties of psychiatry, including psychotherapy, child and adolescent psychiatry, intellectual disability, forensic psychiatry, substance misuse, and old age psychiatry. The book provides a critical review of the literature and a response to the questions posed by researchers, service users and clinicians, concerning the importance of spirituality in mental healthcare. With contributions from psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, nurses, mental healthcare chaplains and neuroscientists, and a patient perspective, this book is an invaluable clinical handbook for anyone interested in the place of spirituality in psychiatric practice.

Theology, Spirituality and Mental Health provides reflections from leading international scholars and practitioners in theology, anthropology, philosophy and psychiatry as to the nature of spirituality and its relevance to constructions of mental disorder and mental healthcare. Key issues are explored in depth, including the nature of spirituality and recent debates concerning its importance in contemporary psychiatric practice, relationship between demons and wellbeing in ancient religious texts and contemporary practice, religious conversion, and the nature and importance of myth and theology in shaping human self understanding. These are used as a basis for exploring some of the overarching intellectual and practical issues that arise when different disciplines engage together with an attempt to better understand the relationship between spirituality and mental health and translate their findings into mental healthcare practice.

Factor your clients' religious beliefs into their therapy! A recent Gallup poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed said they would prefer to receive counseling from a therapist who is religious. The Power of Spirituality in Therapy: Integrating Spiritual and Religious Beliefs in Mental Health Practice addresses the apprehensions many clinicians have when it comes to discussing God with their clients. Authors Peter A. Kahle and John M. Robbins draw from their acclaimed workshops on the integration of spirituality and psychotherapy to teach therapists how they can help clients make positive life changes that are consistent with their values and spiritual and/or religious orientations. The Power of Spirituality in Therapy combines psychotherapy, spirituality, and humor to examine the “pink elephants” of academia-Godphobia and institutional a-spiritualism. The book explores the “learned avoidance” that has historically limited therapists in their ability—and willingness—to engage clients in “God-talk” and presents clinicians with methods they can use to incorporate spirituality into psychotherapy. Topics such as truth, belief, postmodernism, open-mindedness, and all-inclusiveness are examined through empirical findings, practical steps and cognitive processes, and clinical stories. The Power of Spirituality in Therapy includes: To Be (Ethical) or Not to Be? WHAT is the Question? To Believe or Not to Believe? That is NOT the Question! The Deification of Open-Mindedness Learning From Our Clients In God Do Therapists Trust? and much more! The Power of Spirituality in Therapy is an essential resource for therapists, counselors, mental health practitioners, pastoral counselors, and social work professionals who deal with clients who require therapy that reflects the importance of God in their lives. This guide will help those brave enough to explore how their own spiritual beliefs and/or biases can create problems when working with those clients.

This refreshing new work is a practical overview of religious and spiritual issues in psychiatric assessment and treatment. Eleven distinguished contributors assert that everyone has a worldview and that these religious and spiritual variables can be collaborative partners of science, bringing critical insight to assessment and healing to treatment. Unlike other works in this field, which focus primarily on spiritual experience, this clearly written volume focuses on the cognitive aspects of belief -- and how personal worldview affects the behavior of both patient and clinician. Informative case vignettes and discussions illustrate how assessment, formulation, and treatment principles can be incorporated within different worldviews, including practical clinical information on major faith traditions and on atheist and agnostic worldviews. The book's four main sections give concise yet comprehensive coverage of varying aspects of worldview: Conceptual Foundation -- The Introduction explains the significance of worldview and its context in the development of psychiatry; reviews misunderstandings about spirituality and worldview and how they can be resolved in contemporary practice; and discusses Freud's significant influence on psychiatry's approach to religion and spirituality. Clinical Foundations -- Three chapters review how clinicians can integrate spiritual and religious perspectives in the basic clinical processes of assessment (gathering a religious or spiritual history); diagnosis and case formulation (including religious and spiritual factors); and treatment (including a review of ethical issues). Patients and Their Traditions -- Six chapters discuss Catholic and Protestant Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and secularists (atheists and agnostics), including a brief history, clinical implications of core beliefs, and variations of therapeutic encounters (both where patient and clinician share the same faith and where they do not) for each faith tradition. Worldview and Culture -- A concluding chapter reviews issues of a global culture where faiths once rarely encountered in North America are increasingly seen in clinical practice. This well-organized text sheds much-needed light on an area too often obscure to many clinicians, fostering a balanced integration of religion and spirituality in mental health training and practice. Bridging several disciplines in a novel way, this thought-provoking volume will find a diverse audience among mental health care students, educators, and professionals everywhere who seek to better integrate the religious and spiritual aspects of their patients' lives into assessment and treatment.

Contemporary research supports the importance of spirituality for mental health. Counselors, social workers, psychologists and other therapists wonder how to include spirituality in treatment. Mental health training and current treatment models do not equip clinicians to adequately address the topic of spirituality. The Integrated Self presents a model for identifying and assessing spirituality within the client’s own life and experience. By operationally defining spirituality as a dimension of the client’s experience, The Integrated Self explores the role of culture, values, beliefs, and lifestyle for understanding the spiritual dimension of the person. Using case studies, clinicians learn how to implement the model of the integrated self within their existing theoretical orientation. The Integrated Self also includes discussions on the approaches for spiritual assessment and ethical issues related incorporating spirituality in mental health treatment. While other books focus on religious beliefs, spiritual practices, or formulations of a general kind of spirituality, The Integrated Self provides a model for a holistic approach that can be adapted in both mental health and health care settings.