| Abstract: | Professional psychologists have recently been encouraged to sensitively address religious/spiritual issues in psychotherapy. But how frequently do practitioners make religiously/spiritually informed interventions with their clients, and how important do they think it is to do so? Based on the existing literature, the authors identified 29 recommended religious/spiritual psychotherapy behaviors and surveyed 96 psychologists regarding perceived importance and use of these behaviors. The most and least frequently endorsed behaviors were identified. The greater the practitioners' religious/spiritual self-identification, the more likely they were to report using these behaviors in psychotherapy. However, overall, and for 90% of the individual items, clinicians engaged in these religious/spiritual psychotherapy behaviors less frequently than their importance ratings suggested they should. Practice implications and suggestions for educators are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
