TruthBook Religious News Blog

A forum urges professionals to be sensitive to their clients' faiths and experiences.

By K. Connie Kang, Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2006

For decades, religion and psychotherapy — like oil and water — did not mix.

Clinical psychologists kept spirituality and religion out of their practice, while some religious people looked askance at psychotherapy.

Not anymore.

Mental health professionals and religious workers are breaking out of their traditional ways to adopt holistic approaches — looking to see what they can learn, unlearn and cull from one another to better serve people who come to them for help. Also evident is mutual respect.

At the third national conference on spirituality and mental health, sponsored by Pasadena-based Pacific Clinics last week in Burbank, 400 people in caring professions and ministries spent a day together to talk about the importance of spirituality and religion in mental health.

Speakers and attendees included psychotherapists, social workers and parish nurses, along with rabbis, Protestant pastors and Catholic nuns and priests.

"Personally, I look upon Jesus as the great healer of our souls and bodies, but I am delighted to see this connection now of psychotherapy and religion," said the Rt. Rev. Alexei Smith, head of Interreligious and Ecumenical Affairs for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. "It's wonderful."

With two plenary speakers and 10 experts conducting separate sessions — topics included the classical Buddhist technique of "mindfulness" and the emerging practice of "positive psychology" — there was something for everyone.

But one theme ran through "Spirituality and Mental Health: New Horizons, New Directions": People with solid spiritual foundations tend to be healthier and recover better when their lives turn for the worse.

Conversely, people entering treatment for drug addiction tend to show alienation from religion, low involvement in spiritual practices or unusually low rates of religious affiliation, he said. Miller is regarded as a pioneer researcher on the use of spirituality in substance abuse treatment and recently retired as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of New Mexico.

In the context of the conference, spirituality was viewed broadly — encompassing not only religions, belief in God or some other higher power, but also thoughts, feelings, experiences and actions related to a search for the sacred.

In one well-attended session, the Rev. Siang-Yang Tan, a professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, talked about spiritually oriented psychotherapy.

Whatever spiritual intervention that therapists might choose — Scriptures, prayer or silence — must be relevant to the disorder under treatment, said Tan, a clinical psychologist and senior pastor of First Evangelical Church in Glendale.

Even when a therapist and client come from the same religious background, one cannot assume anything. Suppose a Christian therapist has a charismatic client who wants to pray in tongues, a practice that makes that therapist feel uncomfortable, Tan said.

"The best thing is to refer the client to a Pentecostal counselor," he said.

But Tan said all mental health professionals must be sensitive to spiritual and religious clients and that aspect of their lives.

He also spoke of the new movement called positive psychology, being developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

Its direction is toward the "positive sides of human experiences," emphasizing virtues, character strengths and learning to be grateful, he said.