Measuring religious and spiritual competence across helping professions: Previous efforts and future directions.

Abstract

Emerging research has suggested that the integration of clients’ religion/spirituality (RS) in mental and behavioral health treatment has the potential to improve outcomes. Historically, content related to clients’ religious/spiritual beliefs and practices has not been included in training programs across helping professions, yet many professional organizations include standing ethical mandates that clinical practitioners ethically, effectively, and competently assess and attend to this area of clients’ lives as it relates to practice. Given these ethical mandates to include clients’ RS in treatment, and with few helping professionals having received training in this area, it is critical that helping professions become aware of current practitioners’ levels of competence in this area. However, few efforts have been made to develop and standardize reliable and valid instruments to measure helping professions’ competence as it relates to RS. This article provides an overview of previous efforts to evaluate and measure RS competence in counseling, psychology, psychiatry, marriage and family therapy, social work, and pastoral counseling. Implications regarding current methods of measuring RS competence are included, with recommendations for future efforts to evaluate RS competence among helping professions.

A novel training program for mental health providers in spiritual competencies

“…In addition, each profession that provides mental health treatment (e.g., psychology, social work, counseling, marriage and family therapy) requires its graduate training programs to abide by standing accreditation standards that include attention to the importance of respecting various areas of client diversity, including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion/spirituality, age, culture, socioeconimic status, disability, and more (APA, 2015;ACAREP, 2016;COAMFTE, 2016;CSWE, 2015). Yet, complicating matters is the fact that, to date, there is no agreed upon set of spiritual competencies, training guidelines, or methods of evaluating such competency acquisition for mental health providers (Hodge, 2018;Oxhandler & Pargament, 2018;Vieten et al, 2016).…”

Online Training Program Improves Providers’ Spiritual Competencies in Mental Health Care

“…Complicating matters is the fact that, to date, there is no agreed upon set of spiritual competencies, training guidelines, or methods of evaluating such competency acquisition for mental health providers (Hodge, 2018;Oxhandler & Pargament, 2018;Vieten et al, 2016).…”

On becoming: The autoethnographic healing journey of one counsellor in training

“…Additionally, many clients would like to discuss this important dimension of their lives in therapy with their counsellor (Oxhandler & Pargament, 2018) and yet feel apprehension in doing so, fearing that their religious and spiritual views and values will be denigrated (Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2000).…”

“…It would seem that though the profession of counselling may be seen as secular, many practitioners hold spiritual and religious beliefs that deeply impact their work as therapists and that there exists a reciprocal relationship whereby their work with clients also impacts their personal spiritual beliefs (Bilgrave & Deluty, 1998;Smith & Orlinsky, 2004). Yet, most counselling graduate programs spend little to no time preparing students for the practice of working with those with various spiritual and religious beliefs, let alone being attentive to their own religious and spiritual beliefs, whether that be within formal coursework or supervision (Shafranske, 2016); this despite the evidence of its relevance to clients and positive outcomes (Harris et al, 2014;Oxhandler & Pargament, 2018), and the importance of sacred moments within the therapeutic relationship (Pargament, 2014). Harris et al (2014) point out that spirituality and religion are interrelated and rely on each other; while spirituality can be seen as the individual's quest for connection to the divine, the transcendent and the sacred; religion is a container in which this quest can occur.…”

“…Having said that, it must be acknowledged that the mature branches and forms of religious tradition have many things in common, not the least of which are the common questions they grapple with (Benner, 2018). For all these reasons, the cultural competence of counselling professionals cannot be overlooked and must necessarily include religious and spiritual culture (Oxhandler & Pargament, 2018); and the counsellor must be very aware of their own spiritual and religious beliefs in considering their approach to working with clients (Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2000).…”