Mental health professionals should integrate patients’ spiritual beliefs
By Liz Lockhart
Mental health professionals should integrate a patient’s spiritual belief into their treatment programme,especially if the patient is religious, says a new study.
Researchers have found that individuals who believe in a benevolent God tend to worry less and be more acceptant of life’s uncertainties than those who believe in a punishing or indifferent God.
The paper was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. It reports data from two separate studies. One questioned 332 subjects who were solicited from religious websites and religious organisations. It included Christians and Jews.
Lead researcher, David H. Rosmarin, Ph.D., said ‘The implications of this paper for the field of psychiatry are that we have to take patients’ spirituality more seriously than we do.’
‘Most practitioners are unprepared to conceptualise how spiritual beliefs may contribute to affective states and thus many struggle to integrate such themes into treatment in a spiritually sensitive manner’ the study stated.
This study found that those who trusted that God would look after them had lower levels of worry and stress and less intolerance of uncertainty in their lives than those who had a ‘mistrust’ that God would help them out.
The second study involved 125 subjects from different Jewish organizations. A two-week programme designed to increase trust in God and decrease mistrust in God was implemented using an audio-video programme.
Participants in the two-week programme reported significant increases in trust and significant decreased mistrust in God, as well as clinically and statistically significant decreases in intolerance or uncertainty, worry and stress.
‘These finding suggest that certain spiritual beliefs are tied to intolerance of uncertainty and worry for some individuals,’ the paper concluded.
‘We found that the positive beliefs of trust in God were associated with less worry and that this relationship was partially mediated by lower levels of intolerance of uncertainty. Conversely, the negative beliefs of mistrust in God correlated with higher worry and intolerance’ Rosmarin said.
Researchers wanted to expand their knowledge of why people worry.
‘We had proposed that beliefs about God, both positive and negative, would relate to both worry and intolerance of uncertainty and we found support for our model,’ Rosmarin said in an interview. ‘They do relate.’
The paper noted that other studies have shown that 93 percent of Americans believe in God or a higher power and that 50 percent of them say that religion is very important to them.
‘Furthermore, existing evidence indicates that many areas of spirituality and religion are salient predictors of psychological functioning,’ it adds.
Yet Rosmarin said that mental health providers rarely if ever ask patients about their spiritual beliefs. ‘That’s crazy,’ he said. ‘We don’t even ask. We aren’t trained to. And it is important.’
Rosmarin said the matter is ‘a health care issue, not a religious issue,’ and said that by knowing what people believe, mental health professionals can do a better job of helping patients.
Source: McLean Hospital
Just a few weeks ago Mental Healthy asked - Does 'faith' have a role in recovery? Well if this study is anything to go by then it does.
