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Therapists’ Integration of Religion and Spirituality in Counseling: A Meta-Analysis
Summarized by, Charles Thomas
Authors: Donald F. Walker; Richard L. Gorsuch; Siang- Yang Tan
Date: October 2004
Journal: Counseling and Values, Vol. 49
Key Terms/Concepts:
Religion – more organizational, ritual, and ideological
Spirituality – more personal, affective, and experiential
Explicit integration – a more overt approach that directly and systematically deals with spiritual or religious issues in therapy and uses spiritual resources
Implicit integration – a more covert approach that does not initiate the discussion of religious or spiritual issues and does not openly, directly, or systematically use spiritual resources
Intrapersonal integration –refers to the manner in which a therapist uses his or her personal religious or spiritual experiences in counseling
Main Statistics (if any):
90% of Americans claim Protestant or Catholic Religions
40% attend religious services weekly
More than 2/3rds of Americans consider personal spiritual practice to be an important part of their daily lives.
Findings in 18 studies of 3.813 therapists
Protestant (34.51%) Jewish (19.61) Catholic (13.89)
82.54% reported being active in their religion
66.6% reported using prayer; 64.1% reported using religious language/metaphors, and concepts; 44.4% reported using scripture in therapy
82% reported rarely or never discussed religious issues in training; 13.6% reported sometimes and 4.3% reported often
Among explicitly religious therapist
8.79% reported being inactive
42.2% of cases forgiveness was used; 39.2 use scripture/teaching of Biblical concepts; 32.6% used confrontation of sin; 18.2% used religious imagery
73.6% of therapist prayed for their clients outside of session
29.1% used in-session prayer
Key Findings:
Majority of therapists were with a religious denomination but were inactive, this contrasts the general population
Explicitly religious therapists may be valuable resource for therapy cases with religious clients when the consulting therapist does not have a good understanding of the cultural heritage of the client.
Given the lack of training regarding the integration of religion and spirituality in counseling, it seems that most integration of religion and spirituality in counseling occurs through intrapersonal integration as a result of therapists own religious or spiritual experience.
Explicitly religious therapists would seem better equipped
Training could not only occur in classrooms but with supervision or consultation
The results indicate that many therapist are already making use of religion and spirituality in therapy and that scripture and prayer were common techniques.