From personal experience to clinical practice to research: A career path leading to public policy changes in integrating spirituality into mental health.

Abstract

The editor of Spirituality in Clinical Practice, Lisa Miller, invited me to reflect on my career over the past 35 years focused on integrating spirituality into public mental health. Woven into this account is the story behind a recently developed spiritual assessment interview that I developed for use in many California county mental health agencies and have presented at American Psychological Association skills building sessions and workshops. This article traces the interplay of personal experience, clinical work, research, and public policy that illustrates core dynamic interactions of psychological science and praxis.

Learning Spiritual Behaviours as a Means to Reverse Harmful Epigenetic Changes Resulting from Domestic Violence

“…He reported that integrating traditional Western empirical approaches with Eastern spiritual approaches had proved beneficial to his patients. He stated that many of his patients had achieved positive results from his therapeutic approach, which in the final analysis, is all that matters [15].…”

“…www.yumedtext.com | November-2018 5 While spiritual psychology is practiced more in non-Western cultures, it has been more mainstream in recent years. Lukoff [15] reflected on his 35 years of clinical practice in California, in which he had integrated spiritual therapy into his psychiatry practice. He reported that integrating traditional Western empirical approaches with Eastern spiritual approaches had proved beneficial to his patients.…”

“…Western conventional and Eastern spiritual psychology, like Western and Eastern medicine, have begun to integrate in recent years [15,16]. Plante stated that it was necessary for Western psychologists to improve their professional cultural competence regarding their patients' spirituality.…”

“…These include a deeper connection between the therapist and the patient [16]. Lukoff [15] reported that a spiritual approach had worked with patients for whom other approaches had failed. The difference between spiritual psychology and mainstream psychology is that the latter does not emphasize the patient's spiritual life, which may be extremely important to the patient.…”

An evidence-based program for enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration to promote spiritual care in an adolescent psychiatric residential facility

“…[1] Although academic medical centers recognize the role of spiritual care, [2] it is not clear how to best integrate spirituality in an interprofessional practice. Interprofessional treatment teams (IPTT) are designed to work on common goals to improve patient outcomes.…”