Religiosity/Spirituality and Mental Health: Psychiatric Staff’s Attitudes and Behaviors

Abstract

Along with the bio-psycho-social model in patient-centered care, religiosity/spirituality (ReS) receives increasing attention from medical communities. Correspondingly, healthcare professionals' perspectives and their attitudes towards ReS receive increased attention, as their attitudes play a crucial role in the therapeutic process. In this context a nationwide study was conducted at German university hospitals and confessional clinics to find out what kind of attitudes psychiatrists and nurses have towards ReS in clinical settings. The respondents generally regarded dealing with religious/spiritual issues as appropriate, and also rated themselves to be ready to integrate ReS into therapies. Otherwise, most of the respondents underlined professional neutrality as preventing factor for an integration.

The NERSH International Collaboration on Values, Spirituality and Religion in Medicine: Development of Questionnaire, Description of Data Pool, and Overview of Pool Publications

“…It shows the tension and ambivalences of mental health staff between their readiness to integrate R/S aspects into treatment-basically considered as appropriate to be dealt with in therapies-and their attitudes and claims of professional neutrality [18].…”

“…International research teams translated the RSMPP using mainly forward-backward translations with Face Validations in the following years [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…This article describes the development, contents, and first cross national comparisons based on an international research tool, first developed in 2002 and executed in 2003 with subsequent publications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], translated into seven languages [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] and optimized in 2013. The data document the impact of Health Professionals' (HPs') religious and secular beliefs and values on the clinical encounter.…”

Er det rom for livssynstemaer i dagenspsykisk helsearbeid?

“…De positive holdningene er ofte knyttet til ønsket om å utøve et holistisk perspektiv (1). Negative holdninger kan vaere uttrykk for at profesjonelle er engstelige for å inkludere livssynsspørsmål grunnet bekymringer for egne faglige og personlige grenser, og mulige skadelige effekter på allerede sårbare pasienter (9). Tidligere bruker Sigrun Tømmerås (10) har vaert opptatt av denne problematikken.…”

“…Dette kan bidra til å fremme mestring, mening, håp og positive endringsprosesser (12). Pasienter ønsker at livssynstemaer blir tydeligere inkludert i terapiprosessen, men helsepersonell kjenner seg ofte ukomfortable i møte med disse behovene og unngår derfor ofte å respondere på dem (9,13).…”