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Spirituality and Mental Health

Clinical Applications

• By Gary W. Hartz, Harold G. Koenig

• Price: $39.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 156
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 25th July 2005
• ISBN: 978-0-7890-2477-0

About the Book

Learn to conduct a client-centered assessment of spirituality—and use the findings to enhance your interventions as well as your clients' psychospiritual coping abilities

Even to clinicians practiced in helping clients to manage their stress, the impact of clients’ spirituality upon their mental health can be difficult to discern and discuss. Moreover, ethical dilemmas can arise when clinicians feel compelled to intervene with a client’s negative religious coping.

Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications can help. This thought-provoking guide for mental health professionals and pastoral counselors provides you with a framework to assess and incorporate client-based spirituality into your practice. The author provides case
examples and clinical models related to spirituality and mental health, as well as useful questionnaires for assessing clients. He provides a client-centered ethical framework for integrating spirituality into treatment, and then discusses how to apply it to clients’ problems, especially those related to life crises, resentment over past offenses, guilt over past mistakes, and
substance abuse. He also discusses how mindfulness meditation can enhance clients’ coping ability. Finally, he includes a useful Leader’s Guide for the psychoeducational spirituality group, which is designed to educate patients and church groups.

Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications shows how professionals in the above disciplines can address the impact of spirituality on clients by:

• gaining an understanding of the construct of spirituality
  
• assessing spirituality and its interface with clients’ presenting problems, particularly when spirituality is central to their values.
  
• intervening sensitively in ways that use clients’ spiritual perspectives and practices to enhance their coping mechanisms.
  
• using the included Leader’s Guide to the 5-session psychoeducational spirituality group

As the baby boom generation ages, faith becomes a more integral part of that generation’s consciousness. Whether you are a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a social worker, or a pastoral counselor, Spirituality and Mental Health: Clinical Applications is a resource that you’ll return to again and again as you work to improve the lives of your clients.

Table of Contents

• Preface
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• Chapter 1. Definitions of Spirituality and Religion
  
• Why Spirituality Now?
  
• Definitions
  
• Overlap Between Spirituality and Religion
  
• Transcendence
  
• Conclusion
  
• Chapter 2. Assessment of Spirituality
  
• A Coping Model of Assessment
  
• Application of the Model to Clinical Practice
  
• Positive and Negative Religious Coping
  
• Assessing Values: “Where Am I Going?”
  
• The DSM-IV’s Diagnosis of Religious or Spiritual Problem
  
• Religious Issues and Psychiatric Disorders
  
• Conclusion
  
• Chapter 3. Ethical Issues in Spirituality and Mental Health
  
• American Psychological Association Ethical Guidelines
  
• A Client-Centered Ethical Framework
  
• Specific Ethical Issues
  
• Conclusion
  
• Chapter 4. Meditation
  
• Benefits of Meditation
  
• Applications of Mindfulness Meditation to Coping
  
• Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy
  
• Conclusion
  
• Chapter 5. Letting Go of Anger and Practicing Forgiveness
  
• Forgiveness As a Religious Principle
  
• Definitions and Types of Forgiveness
  
• Theoretical Phases of Forgiveness
  
• Therapeutic Efficacy of Forgiveness
  
• Potential Disadvantages of Forgiveness
  
• Continuum of Forgiveness
  
• The Continuing Controversy over Forgiveness
  
• Self-Forgiveness
  
• Conclusion
  
• Chapter 6. Spiritually Attuned Intervention
  
• Substance-Abusing Clients: The Twelve-Step Tradition
  
• Clients in Crisis: Crisis As Danger and Opportunity
  
• Devoutly Religious Clients: Religiously Adapted Therapy
  
• Conclusion
  
• Chapter 7. The Psychoeducational Spirituality Group
  
• Background
  
• Facilitators
  
• Overview of the Sessions
  
• Conclusion
  
• Appendix A. The Psychoeducational Spirituality Group: A Guide for Group Facilitators
  
• Planning: Materials and Session Length
  
• Session One: “What Is Spirituality for You?”
  
• Session Two: Meditation Without Prescribed Religious Content
  
• Session Three: Coping with Grief
  
• Session Four: Letting Go of Anger and Practicing Forgiveness
  
• Optional Additional Session on Self-Forgiveness
  
• Session Five: Crisis As Danger and Opportunity
  
• Session Six: Gratitude
  
• Appendix B. Reproducible Material
  
• References
  
• Index
  

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