Catalyzing a Cultural Shift toward Integrating Religious and Spiritual Competencies in Mental Health Care Through Training and Systems-Level Change

Roughly 80% of mental health providers in the U.S. are from fields of psychology, social work, counseling, and marriage and family therapy (MFT). Recognizing rising rates of mental health struggles alongside a growing body of research indicating that integrating clients’ religion/spirituality (R/S) into mental health care often improves outcomes, lack of training on religious/spiritual competencies in these professions is problematic. Specifically, clinicians are rarely equipped with awareness, knowledge, and skills to address R/S dimensions of clients’ lives. Building on a JTF-funded planning grant, this project will identify and address barriers to equipping mental health providers to integrate clients’ R/S via micro-, mezzo-, and macro-level objectives across four sub-projects: (1) develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate an integrated curriculum approach to R/S competency training that can be incorporated into graduate courses across the four professions; (2) stimulate research on R/S competencies and produce tools for assessment and training in clinical settings; (3) conduct a national survey of graduate faculty to illuminate faculty views/behaviors as well as barriers/supports to training students in R/S competencies; and (4) coordinate a set of systems-level change activities to identify/remove barriers and promote widespread integration of R/S competencies in mental health training, research, and practice. Our interdisciplinary, multi-pronged approach will generate resources for defining, studying, and assessing R/S competencies, establish empirically supported training methods to promote R/S competencies, synergize diverse stakeholders with a shared commitment to spiritually competent mental health care, and fuel momentum for systemic and cultural changes beyond this grant. Ultimately, we aim to promote human flourishing by ensuring every mental health care provider in the U.S. acquires the basic competencies to honor clients’ R/S in their practice.