Professor University Of North Texas - Denton, Texas
Psychotherapy clients have expressed preference for their psychotherapists to incorporate clients’ religious and spiritual beliefs into clinical practice. Despite this, psychotherapist competency development in addressing religious and spiritual concerns is not common practice. In fact, religious and spiritual integration in psychotherapy is a topic often avoided by psychotherapists. In addition to this hesitant approach, there is a lack of research connecting religious and spiritual integrations in psychotherapy to client outcomes. This presentation will share new results from a recent study elucidating the relationship between clinician religious and spiritual competence and client outcome variables. Drawing two samples of clinicians (licensed psychologists and doctoral psychology trainees enrolled in accredited programs), a panel of expert raters (3 psychologists and 3 members of the clergy) rated each clinician on their observable religious/spiritual competencies during interactions with simulated clients as portrayed by professional actors. Actors provided additional data regarding their experience of rapport, cultural humility, and perceived effectiveness. In addition to providing psychometric support for a new measure of specific competencies, the findings of this study clarify the relationship between religious and spiritual competency and psychotherapy variables, including working alliance and psychotherapist cultural humility.
