Enhancing Practice-Based Evidence for Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapies: An Interdisciplinary Big Data Project

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 research questions: (1) What types of spiritual approaches and interventions do mental health professionals use in their practices during the course of treatment? (2) When and how often do mental health professionals use spiritual approaches and interventions during the course of treatment? (3) How effective are spiritual approaches and interventions with different types of clinical issues and patients? Funding from the Templeton Foundation for this project will enable us to attract research teams and treatment sites from around the world to collaborate in creating the largest and richest data set in existence about spiritually integrated treatment approaches. Our research and network of collaborators will help ensure that religious and spiritual resources for therapeutic change are never again neglected in the healthcare professions. Spiritually committed people throughout the world will have greater access to mental health services that are effective and that honor the healing resources of their spiritual worldviews and communities.