Spiritual Directors and Clinical Psychologists: A Comparison of Mental Health and Spiritual Values

Howard, Nicholas C; McMinn, Mark R.; Bissell, Leslie D; Faries, Sally; VanMeter, Jeffrey B

doi:10.1177/009164710002800409

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…They were all members of the U.K. Network of Christians in Psychology (NeCIP)--an organization not dissimilar to CAPS, although considerably smaller. 1 As Howard et al (2000) indicate about CAPS, NeCIP members are from the more evangelical Christian tradition; the participants were therefore chosen not for religious representativeness, but rather for vivid illustration. Their demographic details are given in Table 1.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants' personal lifestyle was strongly associated with what they considered to be important values in therapy (e.g., those scoring high on religiosity rated the final value highly). Howard, McMinn, Bissell, Faries and VanMeter (2000) used the same list of values to survey random samples of 72 APA clinical psychologists, 109 Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) clinical psychologists, and 134 members of the organization, Spiritual Directors International. Like Jensen and Bergin, they found some core agreement between all groups, but on values like spirituality/religiosity only the spiritual directors and the CAPS psychologists were in agreement; regulated sexual fulfilment was endorsed as important for mental health by the CAPS psychologists alone--reminiscent perhaps of Smiley's suggestion of a 'strongly religious' group.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Examining Connections between Values and Practice in Religiously Committed U.K. Clinical Psychologists

Baker

Wang

2004

Journal of Psychology and Theology

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T he number of times people have asked us "How can you be a psychologist and a Christian?" has drawn us to the simple conclusion that not a few lay individuals must think that the values associated with the two may well be incompatible. Shafranske (1996) suggests that psychology and religion are seen as "paradigms that offer systems of significance, and compete as institutions of influence within the polity" (p. 157, emphasis added). In less general terms, Bergin, Payne and Richards (1996) point out that professional guidelines (American Psychological Association [APA], 1992) prescribe standards which endorse certain values over others, and that this may indeed almost inevitably potentiate value-clash situations for Christian and other religious people-clients or psychologists-in clinical areas such as abortion, or sexual preference. Allen Bergin (1996) wrote the following keynote to his review of the subject: "a value-free or value-neutral approach to psychotherapy has become untenable, and is being supplanted by a more open and more complete value-informed perspective" (Bergen et al., 1996, p. 297). This being so, he suggests that a purely secular psychotherapy provides an 'alien values framework' for the majority of its clients. Demographic information (Gallup, 1994) shows that for two-thirds of the U.S. population, religion is "a very important factor" in their lives, one third endorsing that it is "the most important factor," whereas Bergin and Jensen's (1990) survey of psychotherapists found their endorsement of religious values lower than the U.S. national average, with clinical psychologists reporting the lowest levels. They are thus positioned as 'out of step', so to speak-a minority group who may risk being out of touch with their clientèle on a major formative influence. However, our perception of the extent of this risk may depend partly upon the categories used to measure it. Shafranske and Malony (1990) report that 40% of their sample of 409 clinical psychologists endorsed belief in God but that when this was made less specific (belief in a transcendent dimension) the figure rose to a substantial majority-70%

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Examining Connections between Values and Practice in Religiously Committed U.K. Clinical Psychologists

Baker

Wang

2004

Journal of Psychology and Theology

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“…As such topics move into the mainstream, barriers between religious and mental health professionals may be broken down further. A recent study compared the values of three groups of counsellors: Christian spiritual directors, Christian psychologists who were members of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and a sample of practising clinical psychologists randomly selected from the membership directory of the American Psychological Association (Howard, McMinn, Bissell, Faries, & VanMeter, 2000). While the groups differed in the extent to which they endorsed some mental health and spiritual values (e.g., forgiveness), all three groups endorsed a mature outlook, integration/coping, freedom/autonomy, and expression of feelings.…”

Section: Networking and Referralsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious issues in counselling: are Australian psychologists “dragging the chain”?

Passmore

2003

Australian Psychologist

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While American psychologists have been making significant contributions regarding the best ways to deal with religious issues in counselling, Australian psychologists have generally been less active in stimulating debate, conducting research, and making clinical applications in this area. In this paper, it is argued that consideration of religious issues is an important aspect of therapy. In framing this discussion, consideration is given to boundaries and the task and role of the therapist. Suggestions are given for understanding value conflicts, implementing religion‐accommodative techniques, networking with colleagues in the religious community, and training psychologists to sensitively deal with religious issues in therapy.

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“…Today, the common denominator of many, though not all, conceptions of spirituality is its reference to transcendence [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. To measure this phenomenon, the most common scales used are those developed by Catlin et al [ 38 ], Grant et al [ 39 ], Harper and Schulte-Murray [ 40 ], and Howard et al [ 41 ], although these are generally limited to specific religious beliefs, making them inapplicable to different populations. In response to this problem, Kira et al [ 42 ] proposed the concept of the interfaith spirituality (IFS) based on the personal narrative and heuristics used to make sense of a person’s time-limited existence, as well as to cope with existence-threatening events.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polish Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the Long- and Short-Form Interfaith Spirituality Scale

Surżykiewicz

Skalski

Niesiobędzka

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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Spirituality is widely believed to play an important role in securing health, and modern health care is increasingly being combined with spiritual care. This state of affairs is generating widespread interest in the construct from practitioners and researchers, resulting in the need to develop accurate and comprehensive measures of spirituality. The purpose of this study was to adapt the Polish version of the Interfaith Spirituality Scale (IFS), which consists of twenty-two statements, as well as its short version, including four statements. The IFS is not limited to any one religious denomination, making it possible to conduct research across diverse communities. The analyses were conducted on a sample of 642 Poles aged 18–68, 48% of whom were women. The Polish version of the scale showed high internal consistency (α = 0.96 for the IFS and α = 0.81 for the short version). Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the structure of the IFS consists of a unitary second-order factor with four first-order factors (direct connection with the creator, asceticism, meditation, and divine love). On the other hand, the structure of the short version is unifactorial. There were positive correlations of the IFS with another measure of spirituality, post-traumatic growth severity, mental well-being, and ecological behaviour, as well as negative correlations with post-traumatic stress disorder symptom severity and depressiveness; these confirmed the high validity of the tool. The results suggest that the IFS may be useful in the study of spirituality on Polish soil.

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Spiritual Directors and Clinical Psychologists: A Comparison of Mental Health and Spiritual Values

Cited by 10 publications

References 22 publications

Examining Connections between Values and Practice in Religiously Committed U.K. Clinical Psychologists

Examining Connections between Values and Practice in Religiously Committed U.K. Clinical Psychologists

Religious issues in counselling: are Australian psychologists “dragging the chain”?

Polish Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the Long- and Short-Form Interfaith Spirituality Scale

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