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.

Miriam Jaffe, PhD, LSW, is an associate teaching professor of graduate composition in the Rutgers University Writing Program. She specializes in life-writing and narrative activism. She is the lead editor of casebooks on K-12 schools as therapeutic communities, sexual trauma, and LGBTQ sexual trauma.

Widian Nicola, LCSW, DSW, is a clinical social worker, qualitative researcher, and assistant professor at Seton Hall University.

Jerry Floersch, LCSW, PhD, is an associate professor of social work at Rutgers University. He is the author of Meds, Money, and Manners: The Case Management of Severe Mental Illness and co-author of Qualitative Methods for Practice Research. His clinical practice focuses on adolescents and adults.

Jeffrey Longhofer, PhD, LCSW, is an associate professor of social work at Rutgers University. He is the author of A-Z of Psychodynamic Practice and the co-author of On Being and Having a Case Manager. His clinical practice focuses on children, adolescents, and adults.