This is a review of attempts to integrate psychotherapeutic techniques derived from religious/spiritual and secular psychological perspectives including findings from the cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, existential-humanistic, and health psychology areas. While research evidence is not abundant, traditional approaches are being applied to spiritual concerns, and spiritual thought is being extended into clinical domains. Caveats abound, but on the whole, commonalities are plentiful and rapprochement is evidenced where neglect formerly existed. Empirical and theoretical efforts have yielded seminal strategies for coping with therapeutic issues laced with spiritual/religious meaning. Working within the clients' value framework is emphasized while being cognizant of one's own values and biases. The use of prayer, forgiveness, scriptural reference or imagery need not be limited to committed believers although understanding and appreciation of these spiritually-derived approaches are essential. There is progress toward compatibility, complementarity, and cohesion among these diverse components of psychotherapy.
A review of outcome measures used in 106 studies, along with a meta-analysis of instruments used in 42 studies investigating the effectiveness of treatments for agoraphobia during the 1980s, is presented. Articles reporting case studies, preliminary reports, and duplicate results are excluded. Content areas covered, source of instrument ratings, and methods of data collection for each instrument are considered. Nine distinct instruments or categories of instruments are meta-analyzed. The size of treatment effects and judgments of improvement are highly dependent on which outcome measures are used in a given study. Intercorrelations of effect sizes suggest commonalities and specific contributions of instruments. Promising instruments are named. Applications for agoraphobia research and outcome measurement in general are presented. This article is part of a dissertation conducted at Brigham Young University. It was written by Benjamin M. Ogles and chaired by Michael J. Lambert. An earlier draft of this article was presented in June, 1989 at the Society for Psychotherapy Research Conference, Toronto.We thank Tom Borkovec and the anonymous reviewers for their intuitive comments on an earlier draft of this article.
After reviewing a representative sample of the better studies exploring how religion relates to mental disorders, we have discovered several domains of positive association between the two. These include family variables, well-being and self-esteem, personal adjustment, social conduct, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual permissiveness, and suicide. On the other hand, we found little evidence supporting religious influence in the prevention of serious clinical diagnoses like bipolar disorders, major depression, schizophrenia, obsessions, and panic disorders. The role of religion in these, however, has not been sufficiently studied.Contraty to some opinions, religious affiliation is not damaging to mental health, nor is it entirely predictive of better mental health. The more useful question to ask is how a person is religious rather than whether a person is religious. Specific measures of religiosity such as intrinsic and extrinsic orientation, level of commitment, and
A dimension of individual differences in shallow affect is proposed on theoretical grounds. One hundred items were prepared and comprised a provisional Shallow Affect Scale. When administered with standard instructions to respond true or false, the resulting Kuder-Richardson formula reliability was .81. When items were paired with personality items irrelevant to shallow affect on the basis of similar endorsement frequencies and again administered in a forced-choice format, reliability increased to .96. Preliminary validity data are reported.
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