Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications

If given a proper framework and support to comprehend these states, the individual can make the leap from psychotic-like states into higher consciousness. Many psychotherapists are of the opinion that psychotherapy by itself is a spiritual enterprise as it provides insight that human beings are interdependent and need each other. The warmth and acceptance by the therapist allows the patient to deal with and integrate the disavowed parts of the self. However, transpersonal psychologists call for a more active integration between spirituality and psychotherapy and a sensitization of all mental health professionals toward transpersonal issues.

There are two broad ways in which spirituality can be integrated within psychotherapy. An explicit integration occurs when therapeutic approach overtly, directly, and systematically deals with spiritual issues in therapy and utilizes spiritual methods including meditation, yoga, prayer, and teachings from sacred texts for the purpose of healing and transformation. However, others favor an indirect approach wherein the therapist is open to dealing with spiritual issues but does not initiate such discussion or use spiritual methods till the client comes up with such concerns on their own.

Also, various spiritually oriented people have started recognizing the potential of modern psychotherapy in sowing seeds for a spiritual journey. They feel that in case of people who are suffering from psychological disorders, modern psychotherapy can strengthen the ego and help in breaking troublesome defenses. In contrast to a neurotic or psychotic self, this mature self that evolves from psychotherapy has the capacity to let go off control and to surrender to deeper self and can therefore lay down foundations for a spiritual evolution of consciousness.

These dialogues between the two camps have led to the development of integrative psychotherapeutic approaches such as transpersonal psychoanalytic psychotherapy,[ 81 , 82 ] existential transpersonal psychotherapy, rational-emotive spiritual therapy, and cognitive spiritual therapy. There is little doubt that spirituality is being increasingly recognized and accepted in the mental health field as having a huge potential for transformation of individual and society, however, the following issues merit attention.

As a result some of them regard spirituality as unscientific, archaic, neurotic, and oppressive and having little value for mental health. Many of them site harmful effects of religion to rebuke spiritual endeavors and treat them as psychiatric conditions. This has two kinds of negative impact. On one hand, it discourages the use of a spiritual framework in psychotherapy and healing and on the other hand patients with spiritual issues feel dissatisfied and agitated due to an unempathic attitude on part of these mental health professionals.

A majority of mainstream psychology training programs rarely have training in transpersonal issues and practices as part of their curriculum. Thus, psychologists and other mental health professionals do not get an opportunity to sensitize to the spiritual domain and even when they are, they are ill-equipped to deal with such issues in clinical practice. Most of the mental health professionals tend to misdiagnose and treat spiritual emergencies as psychotic states. They do not know how best to further a client's spiritual progress. The pervasive tendency of mental health field to remain obsessed with pathology has crept into the spirituality researches as well.

We have far more researches to appreciate the role of spirituality in alleviating mental disorders and illness as compared to the promotion of mental health by spirituality. The current paradigm of science that has been adopted by medical and psychological sciences is a reductionist one based on an atomic and materialistic view of reality. Though, attempts have been made to comprehend spirituality from this perspective they suffer from serious flaws as spirituality defies a materialistic interpretation.

Within the current paradigm, yoga and meditation would best be seen as exercises of body and mind enabling stress management, changing brain chemical and neurotransmitter structures to live longer and happier, and as an effective alternative medicine. However, the scope and potential of spirituality is far beyond this. It is the nascent vehement storehouse for a revolution in consciousness; the way individual sees his self, world, and others and relates to them.

This potential source is still in its nascent stage of utilization by the modern science. Henceforth, training and sensitization toward spirituality should be included in academic programs of mental health. We should develop more insight into the role of spirituality in enhancing mental health. A movement away from the prevalent paradigm is needed to appreciate the full gamut and potential of spiritual transformations.

National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Indian J Psychol Med. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract The paper strives to elucidate the complex yet intimate relation between spirituality and mental health from contemporary perspectives.

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Integration , psychology , spirituality. Jung's analytical psychology and Washburn's contributions Jung held that the self suffered as it was separated from its transpersonal and spiritual unconscious that contained mythic, archetypal, and spiritual energies along with instinctual desires. Assagioli's psychosynthesis Assagioli[ 23 ] felt that people besides repressing unacceptable parts of themselves also repressed their higher impulses such as intuition, altruism, creative inspiration, love, and joy. Ken wilber's spectrum model Using the analogy of light as a metaphor, Ken Wilber[ 24 , 25 ] proposed that consciousness is composed of many different levels thereby integrating various schools of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality under one umbrella.

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Stanislav grof's holotropic model According to Grof, consciousness consists of three main types of territories: Hameed ali's diamond approach Almaas[ 26 — 29 ] integrated insights from object relations, body sensing, and spiritual perspective of Sufism to constitute the diamond approach. Ancient Indian psychology and recent revival by Sri Aurobindo Ancient Indian thought is a storehouse of rich psychological insights elucidating explicit and subtle nuances of processes and constructs such as mental health and illness, cognition, emotion, attention, motivation, perception, self and personality, psychopathology and its treatment.

Depression Spirituality helps depressive patients figure out a meaning or a purpose in their life, which they had lost due to their illness. Anxiety and frustration Relationship between anxiety and spirituality has been explored amongst individuals who have chronic illnesses. Stress and posttraumatic stress disorder Religious coping is a ubiquitous mediator that accounts for the relationship between spirituality and mental health in times of stress.

Schizophrenia Spiritual orientation helps people with chronic schizophrenia in processes of reconstructing a sense of self and recovery. Behavior problems in childhood and adolescence It has been observed that engaging children and adolescents in Pranic Healing Meditation activity leads to a marked reduction in their behavior problems including aggression, nail biting, lying, absenteeism from school, tics, bullying, and enhances their scholastic performance.

Opening to psychic realms As a part of spiritual journey, the person may travel into the inner underworld where he experiences intense suffering, pain, and torture often leading to psychic death followed by rebirth and ascent to higher region.

Contemporary Perspectives on Spirituality and Mental Health

Lack of training in transpersonal issues and practices within mainstream psychology A majority of mainstream psychology training programs rarely have training in transpersonal issues and practices as part of their curriculum. Paucity of spirituality and mental health research The pervasive tendency of mental health field to remain obsessed with pathology has crept into the spirituality researches as well. A reductionist paradigm of our times The current paradigm of science that has been adopted by medical and psychological sciences is a reductionist one based on an atomic and materialistic view of reality.

Footnotes Source of Support: Nil Conflict of Interest: Using the concepts of victor frankl. J Contemp Hum Serv.

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From impasse to innovation. The Future of an Illusion. Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education; An introduction to the psychological thought of Sri Aurobindo. On becoming a person. The transpersonal psychotherapy and counselling. University of Chicago Press; The analyst and the mystic: Psychoanalytic reflections on religion and mysticism.

Princeton University Press; In search of self in India and Japan: Toward a cross-cultural psychology. New York and London: Cultural pluralism and psychoanalysis: The Asian and North American experience. American Psychiatric Association; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. John Wiley and Sons, Inc; The ego and the dynamic ground. Transpersonal psychology in psychoanalytic perspective.

A manual of principles and techniques. The spectrum of consciousness. The Point of Existence.

WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?

Neeleman and King[ 12 ] surveyed the psychiatric practices of psychiatrists in London. In an Australian survey, a large majority of patients with psychiatric illness wanted their therapists to be aware of their spiritual beliefs and needs and believed that their spiritual practices helped them to cope better.

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They reported that majority of the parents believed that spiritual concerns were important and that therapists should consider their spiritual beliefs in the management of the problems of the children. In USA, Curlin et al. Several empirical studies on psychiatrists' religious characteristics have indicated that psychiatrists are significantly less religious than the general population, their patients and other physicians. A study on the factors in the course and outcome of schizophrenia was conducted in the Department of psychiatry, Christian Medical College, Vellore..

It was a collaborative study among three centers—Vellore, Madras and Lucknow. A two-year and five-year follow up showed that those patients who spent more time in religious activities tended to have a better prognosis. The sense of hope and spiritual support that patients get by discussing religious matters help them to cope better. They also suggest that the importance of religion and spirituality is not sufficiently recognized by the psychiatric community.

Mental health workers must take it seriously since psychiatry cannot afford to ignore the importance of spirituality and religion in psychiatry. Sims[ 22 ] gives two case histories which drives home this fact. One is the case of Jim who suffered from Korsakov's psychosis. He was so deteriorated that he mistook his wife for a hat. In the ward, others considered him as desolate individual. But his behavior in the chapel was normal. In absolute concentration and attention, he would partake Holy Communion. He did not forget anything nor did he show any signs of Korsakov's psychosis.

The other patient had chronic schizophrenia. He used to hear a voice commanding him to jump out of the window. His simple devout mother had taught him to resist the voice by praying to God.

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His mind was destroyed, but the capacity for spiritual life was present. Unfortunately, on the final occasion, he was too late to pray and he lost his life. She has suggested that it is the responsibility of psychiatrists to remind the medical fraternity the necessity of putting back the soul in medical ethics and the fact that spirituality is of vital importance for the mental health of people.

As pointed out earlier, spiritual values and religious practices are important in the lives of our patients. Many of their problems may centre round existential preoccupations. It is therefore important that we incorporate spirituality and religious practices in our treatment protocol. We must propagate the Bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model in our approach in psychiatry. Harold Koening,[ 26 ] in his paper Religion and Mental health: This is a treatment technique, incorporating spiritual values to Cognitive behavior therapy, which was developed and promoted at the University of Sydney.

Four key areas are emphasized—acceptance, hope, achieving meaning and purpose and forgiveness. The patient is guided through five phases to achieve meaning and purpose. This starts with examining the inevitables of life such as birth and death. After desensitizing the patient to mortality, the patient is moved to the next phase of letting go of fear and turmoil in life.

The next phase examines the patient's lifestyle aspects that avoid confronting mortality and perpetuate fear and turmoil. The next phase involves a focus on seeking divine purpose, after examining and accepting one's journey in life.

Spirituality and mental health

Finally, meaning is sought by seeking meaning for each day. This is achieved by identifying meaningful and realistic factors within whatever limitations life and illness bring. The main techniques are empathic listening, facilitation of emotional expression and problem solving. The use of meditation, prayers and rituals together with monitoring effects of beliefs and rituals on symptoms form the behavioral components of the treatment. When the patient shows negative cognition, cognitive restructuring is employed. Generally, the treatment takes about 16 sessions, each lasting about 1 hour.

The main indications are depression and adolescent problems. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Indian J Psychiatry v. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer.

Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications - Gary W. Hartz - Google Книги

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Psychiatric history should be catered to the patients' spiritual orientation and religious practices. When we take psychiatric history, we usually ask for the denomination the patient belongs. We do not try to find out how the patient experiences religion.

What does religion and spirituality mean to the patient. The psychiatric history should gather information about patient's religious background and experiences in the past and what role religion plays in coping with life stresses. Has patient had any past negative religious experiences? Has he got spiritual and social support from the congregation which he attends? How active is he in the religious congregation? Some religious beliefs can be in conflict with the proposed treatment. Some religious groups are against any type of treatment.

Some religious conflicts and frustrations may be contributing to the present psychiatric problem. Sexual abuse by religious workers, traumatic events which turned the patient away from religious beliefs and activities, unanswered prayers, etc. There are some questionnaires that can be used to take a history of spirituality and religious experiences. It can also lead to reversal effect of a personal growth of the therapist.

We should respect and support patients' religious beliefs if these help them to cope better or do not adversely affect their mental health. For example, if a patient says that his discipline of fasting and prayer helps him to cope better, then this has to be encouraged. We should also challenge the beliefs that can adversely affect mental health. This has to be done very tactfully. It is better to be neutral till we understand the patients and the issues involved well and a good therapeutic relationship is formed. Patients may wish to discuss with the therapist regarding their subjective experiences and existential needs.

We should spend time in listening to them. Partnership with the religious workers is an useful area. Clinical Applications is a resource that you'll return to again and again as you work to improve the lives of your clients. Ethical Issues in Spirituality and Mental Health. Letting Go of Anger and Practicing Forgiveness. The Psychoeducational Spirituality Group. Meditation Without Prescribed Religious. Crisis As Danger and Opportunity. Appendix B Reproducible Material.