Bringing Spiritually Oriented Psychotherapies into the Healthcare Mainstream: A Preparatory Grant Proposal for an International Grant Competition

For most of the 20th century, mainstream healthcare professionals ignored the role of spirituality in therapeutic healing. Recently this has changed as scholars and practitioners have described many spiritual treatment approaches, grounded in the healing practices of both Western and Eastern spiritual traditions (e.g., prayer, meditation, gratitude, love, forgiveness, altruistic service). Although some research supports these approaches there are weaknesses with the database. Without a more satisfactory research base, spiritual approaches will remain at the fringes of the mental health and medical fields, which will deprive many people of access to sensitive and effective services. The long-term aim of our project is to create an international, interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners dedicated to advancing research and practice in this domain of mental healthcare. Our project will help answer several questions: What types of spiritual approaches do mental health professionals use in their practices? Which approaches do patients prefer? How effective are spiritual approaches are with different types of clinical issues? Are specific types of training in religion and spirituality associated with better treatment outcomes? A one-year preparatory grant will enable us to convene an advisory board to help us design and write our RFP text and the full proposal for the three-year RFP grant competition and project. We will also conduct a literature review and meta-analysis about spiritual approaches and future research needs. Finally, we will further refine our existing research-practice network, website, and online research system so we can successfully carry out the RFP project. Together the preparatory grant and RFP project will help ensure that spiritual sources of change and healing are never again neglected in the healthcare professions.