Spirituality and the Therapeutic Process: A Comprehensive Resource from Intake to Termination

This book is for therapists who want to enhance their effectiveness with clients whose spirituality is a salient part of their worldview. Whether or not the therapist has a spiritual background, the authors demonstrate that it is possible to honor clients' spiritual experience from the beginning to the end of the therapeutic process.

Practical strategies, techniques, and examples are used to show how spirituality can influence each stage of treatment from before the clinical intake, starting with an understanding of ethical practice guidelines and therapist self-awareness, through termination. Self-reflection questions, diverse case examples, and a multiple session case study chapter are provided to build readers' understanding and ability to incorporate spirituality into counseling and psychotherapy.

Practitioners in a broad variety of fields, including counseling and clinical psychology, counselor education, and marriage and family therapy will find this book to be a rich source of ideas for examining and modifying their practice. The authors discuss therapist self-awareness tools such as genogram, autobiography, journaling, and mindfulness; recommendations for overcoming biases toward spirituality; and how an agency's climate, referral sources, and intake forms can discourage or set the stage for discussing the spiritual.

Chapters provide example probing questions and assessment instruments for exploring how spirituality can be a source of strength or confound problems, and present sample treatment plans that address various encounters with clients' spirituality. Authors demonstrate how meaning systems theory can inform case conceptualization and how spiritual discussions and interventions can be part of cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, psychodynamic, and humanistic therapies.

The book also prepares readers for spiritual issues that frequently arise in termination, even if spirituality had not been a focus in previous sessions.

Jamie D. Aten, PhD, is an assistant professor of counseling psychology and assistant director of health and mental health research for the Katrina Research Center at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. He has published numerous research articles on religion and spirituality and is a coeditor of a forthcoming book on culture and clinical practice. His current research on the role of the African American church in overcoming rural mental health disparities and mental health disparities among disaster victims is being supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Pew Charitable Trusts and Rand Gulf States Policy Institute, and Red Cross/MidSouth Foundation. He also serves as the representative to the Committee on Early Career Psychologists for Division 36 (Psychology of Religion) of the American Psychological Association and as the rural health coordinator for the Mississippi Psychological Association.
 
Mark M. Leach, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. He has published numerous articles with diversity issues as their foundation, has authored or coedited three books, and has two coedited books forthcoming. He is an associate editor of the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality® of the American Psychological Association Division 36 (Psychology of Religion) and is on the editorial boards of other journals. His primary research interests are in the areas of culture and forgiveness, international counseling issues, spirituality and religion, comparative ethics, and suicide.