Scientific American on spirituality and psychiatry

From David Rosmarin, writing in Scientific American:

Spirituality has historically been dismissed by psychiatrists, but results from a pilot program at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts indicate that attention to it is a critical aspect of mental health care.

In 2017 my multidisciplinary team of mental health clinicians, researchers and chaplains created Spiritual Psychotherapy for Inpatient, Residential and Intensive Treatment (SPIRIT), a flexible and spiritually integrated form of cognitive-behavioral therapy. We subsequently trained a cadre of more than 20 clinicians, stationed on 10 different clinical units throughout McLean Hospital, to deliver SPIRIT and evaluated the approach. Since 2017, SPIRIT has been delivered to more than 5,000 people. Our results suggest that spiritual psychotherapy is not only feasible but highly desired by patients.

Read more. You may also be interested in our project on mental health and spirituality explored in discussion groups with college students.