Spirituality and Mental Health

The relationship between spirituality and mental health is being explored in the number of ways. From most of the research study, it is found out that the spirituality is the inter, intra and trans-personal experience, which is shaped and directed by the individual’s experiences and the communities in which they live out their lives (Fook, 2016). In other words, there are internal, community, group and the transcendent elements related to spirituality. Religion and spirituality are mutually interconnected in such a way that they sometimes mixed their meaning, which appears as a similar definition. In this content, some research papers will be discussed for getting a more prominent overview of the two main parameters of this article, that is, religion and spirituality, their advantages and disadvantages and effects on the social works (Knight, 2015). As the parameters mentioned above are not formally defined in the research papers which are reviewed in this article, it would be difficult to distinguish religion and spirituality while discussing their positive or negative impacts on the social works. Thus, the interaction between spirituality and mental health is more likely to be dynamic, interactive and complex. Some of the research studies tend to look for a simpler relationship among the narrowly defined outcomes of mental health and spirituality (Loue, 2017).

Nowadays, the social workers are introducing the spiritual, social practice for mitigating the mental health problems among people. Along with the increasing interest in spirituality, the further explanation on how the impact of spirituality on social work practices is imperative (Thompson, 2016). To gain the better understandings of the impact of spirituality in social work practice, the social workers need to involve spirituality in the social work practice. This study will find out the answers to the following research questions: how spirituality can be used in social work practice and how spirituality helps in coping, mental health and grief and loss therapy.

This paper is proposed to enrich social work practice by introducing the concept of spirituality, identifying and exploring knowledge about spiritual techniques to cure mental health problems. Spirituality is the word that means different things for different people at different times in the various cultures and spirituality is expressed through the religious, nature, art and the built environment for centuries (Kadar et al., 2015). This research paper focuses on spirituality in social work practice, which classically implicates the pursuit for the meaning of life especially for people suffering from mental health illness, grief and loss therapy, and chronic mental health issues.

Spirituality in Social Work Practice

According to Crompton (2017), Spirituality can be a more accepted concept in therapy, but from this research paper, it can be deduced that religious issues are the most concerning topics for the therapists as compared to the spiritual issues. In this research paper, religion and spirituality are mainly focused, so it is mandatory to analyse their terminology. It is very difficult to explain the concept of spirituality in words, whereas many professionals describe religion and spirituality as a similar approach, which makes it challenging to distinguish them. Different professionals describe spirituality, some are only focussing on God or a transcendent being while describing spirituality, whereas some practitioners refuse to focus on a higher power, rather they like to include the conceptions of beauty and nature. Crompton defines spirituality in such a way that it is not always necessary to include the concept of God or transcendent being for describing human experience rather it would be easy by focusing on the meaning, purpose and values of life. On the other hand, Religion was explained as a specific and systematic belief which is practised by its followers, but that may or may not include the concept of spirituality.

 Therefore, spirituality can be specified as a more broader and comprehensive approach than religion whereas religion is more connected with some standardised elementary beliefs (Crompton, 2017).  The expression of spirituality among people can be in both religious and non-religious forms so that the approach spirituality can be incorporated with the term religion, but it cannot be drawn as a line of limit. Therefore, whenever people specify the term spirituality, they may include the approach of religion as an aspect of spirituality but not the whole approach of spirituality. By implementing the approach of spirituality and religion into therapy, many professionals check the appropriateness of different issues, although there are a limited number of published research on appropriateness, which addresses spiritual and religious issues in the therapy. By researching the spiritual approach of an individual while working with different social work clinicians, it can be deduced in such a way that one can perceive the feel of appropriateness only by using spiritual interventions. Therefore, in spite of being not assured with the practised codes, social work professionals believe that it is appropriate to integrate spiritual and religious beliefs in their clients’ belief with a positive approach (Crompton, 2017).

According to Oxhandler (2015), Social work professionals mainly focus on the self-determination of the clients, which is the most important guideline value for integrating spiritual interventions in therapy. After going through therapy with a client, social workers never take the initiative to integrate spiritual concerns; it is totally up to the client to go for a spiritual involvement. The social workers put a  question of emphasis for their client after the therapy so that they can understand ‘needs’, ‘wants’, ‘requests’ and ‘lead’ of the client for spiritual intervention as it is exclusively a client-centric approach. This also includes a code of conducts for spiritual interventions, which ensures the client about self-determination throughout the therapy as self-determination is the only parameter, which is respected throughout the process, from the very engagement to the termination.

Understanding Spirituality and Religion

As the social workers are professionally responsible for promoting the rights of self-determination, it also ensures to learn about the research norms as well as it helps to assist the client-centric necessities for integrating spiritual interventions.  Now, culture can be considered as a lens through which the client can perceive the taste of reality. The social worker needs to understand from which culture the client belongs and the cultural aspects of the client for getting the desired result. The culturally competent professionals sketch different cultural aspects of the client by going through their stories or narratives. The author recommends that every social worker should follow the cultural background of the client to know that how culture affects the daily life of the client. This is essential for the social workers as it helps to find the direction of the therapy through which the client can achieve the goal. On the other hand, spiritual competency can be defined in the form of a continuum. It is a part of cultural competence which is more focused and includes a code of conducts which can be expanded over time. Most of the professionals believe that there is a positive effect of integrating spirituality in therapy and as a result, most of the social workers give less priority in addressing the issues in a competent spiritual manner.

From the above research studies, it can be concluded that social work professionals use spiritual interventions appropriately in the context of therapy. In spite of having less amount of quantitative data, case studies with individual have established spirituality as an essential element in the recovery procedure. Prior cases indicate the loopholes in many areas, which are surrounded with the spirituality in clinical practices. With the increase of spiritual interests, further researches will be initiated to understand how spirituality impacts on social work practice.

The spirituality in social work practice plays a great role in helping the clients coping with the mental illness and helps in the recovery process. Social workers have been found to underrate the significance of the spirituality among the clients suffering from the severe mental illness, and this is also found out that some of the clients can have a more effective recovery if the spiritual needs are fulfilled in the treatment (Närhi & Matthies, 2016). The social worker should know what to look for treating spiritually in recovering the mental illness. The recent expressions of spirituality have become more diversified and varied (Bullis, 2013).

Integration of Spiritual Interventions in Therapy

The more common themes in literature describe spirituality as one of the following elements: A sense of different purpose, A sense of connection with self, others, nature, God and other, A quest for wholeness, A belief in the higher beings, Those activities, which give meanings and value to people lives, A sense that there is more life than the material or practical (Kopacz, Simons & Chitaphong, 2015). Spirituality is considered as the vehicle through which the meaning of their values can be sought as per their age, gender, and culture, and political ideology, physical and mental health. Spirituality is often considered as the aspects of the human existence, which gives it humanness (Conrad, 2017). It concerns the structures that give meaning and direction to the people’s lives and helps them to deal with the changes in existence (Arthur, 2015). The main goal of the social worker is to continue the public services by helping the needy people by addressing, managing and resolving the various problems. The social workers should continue the public service despite the self-interest and personal gain (Carrington, 2017). The social workers use their skills and knowledge in helping their clients in serious problems such as drug dependency, criminal behaviours, child abuse and other. The social workers often volunteer their skills through community organisations in free of charge. The main goals of the social services are:

• Providing social service to residents and their families with professionally trained social workers
• Assisting the people in getting more benefited from the community-based health resources and each stay of residents are benefited or not, that is in charge of the social workers (Moffatt & Oxhandler, 2018).
• Strengthening the communications among the residents, families and the facility staffs as only through communication, the problems can be properly explained as well as resolved. These include spirituality, as religious views can solve various problems (Seinfeld, 2012).
• Assisting the facility staff in achieving and maintaining a spiritual environment, this plays an essential role in improving the people’s life. This also provides maximum participation of the residents in planning the policies and their activities (Becvar, 2014).
• Promoting the facility-community interactions and developing the linkages with the large variety of community resources.
• Participating in the assessment and planning related to another long-term social and health care resources (Crisp, 2016).

The interest in spirituality has been progressed, within the social work through the three broad stages, they are:

• Sectarian origins (from the beginnings of the colonial period lasted through early 20th century): The earlier institutions and the human services were influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldviews, which was based on the justice, common responsibility and charity. This period was able to witness the competing explanation of the human behaviour, an emphasis based on the differences among the moral blames and the merits that are the differences among the worthy and the unworthy behaviour against the main focus on the social justices and social reforms (Sue, Rasheed, & Rasheed, 2015).
• Professionalisation and secularization (the 1920s through 1970s): The social work began to distance itself from the early period. The larger society has shifted and replaced the moral views and explanations of the human problems based on the scientific views and the rational understandings. The social work profession began to rely more on the secular humanism, libertarian morality, and the empiricism.  Nowadays increasingly religious and spirituality is viewed as irrelevant, illogical, unnecessary and pathological (Sheridan, 2016).
• The resurgence of interest in spirituality (beginning from the 1980s and continuing through the present): The indicators of the new phase within the profession include the marked increase in the numbers of the publications and the presentations on the topic, the development on the national society of the spirituality and the social work (Greene, 2017).  

Over a century, the importance and the benefits of the spiritual activity of the physical health have been documented and recognized. From the recent study, it is seen that the association between morality and spiritual activity demonstrates that people with religious involvement were more likely to die than non-religious counterparts (Briskman, 2014). The emerging evidence from the recent studies has pointed towards the protective and the beneficial effect of the religious and the spiritual activities for mental health. The emerging evidence shows the shift of the client’s perspectives and also shows that the clients mostly suffers for their relationship issues, different styles of religion, marital dissatisfaction, general well-being and other (Parsell, Eggins & Marston, 2016). Depression is the most common mental health problem, and the social workers need to identify the spiritual, social work practice for resolving this mental health problem. Depression can be categorised by the symptoms like the feeling of sadness, unexplained tiredness and fatigues. The people having a mental disorder are advised and motivated by the social worker in practising spiritual activities like attending church; this often helps to resolve the problem (Stennis et al., 2015).   One of the better ways of understanding this effect is the possibility that affects the incidence of and coping with depression.  Most of the expressions and the elements of spirituality are helpful in mitigating the depressive symptoms and helps in increasing the general wellbeing (Payne, 2015).

Cultural Competency

The religious and spirituality has been categorised as the mediator to account for the relationship between the spirituality and mental health. The religious symbolism and the texts provide ample resources to personify the divine as the other who can be engaged globally for the support, solace and the guidance.  A research study has examined the coping styles of the mentally disordered people. The individual’s refusal to the acceptance of the status and their begging for God to intervene in the amazing, miraculous way to bring out the personally desirable outcomes, all this are the general coping styles examined in the research study in most of the mentally disordered clients (Donaldson & Mayer, 2014). The social support of the individuals can be derived from the leaders, members and clergy of the religious congregations. (Healy, 2014).  The research study reveals that the majority of the practitioners had little knowledge on the educational preparation that is on how to utilise spirituality, how to approach the ethical decision making related to the use of spirituality (Hong, Hodge & Choi, 2015). From most of the researches followed by the respondents of the national survey of NASW, the members involve the spirituality and use the general ethical principles and the considerations. This is seen that social workers lack the guidelines regarding the use of spiritually oriented activities and systematic ethical decision-making. This causes the raise of the concerns regarding the competences based on the skills, knowledge, preparations in making ethical decisions (Briskman, 2016).  From the research studies, it has been found out that most of the clinicians agree that it is essential to involve the spiritual inquiry in the assessment process for determining the role of the spirituality in the client’s life (Milner, Myers & O’Byrne, 2015).

The social work practice based on spiritual values includes the following factors:

• Protecting people from social isolation
• Providing and strengthening the social networks and the family
• Offering the spiritual support in the times of adversity
• Providing individuals with the sense of belonging and the self-esteem

In addition to all these factors, the religious and spiritual support may provide beneficial support than the other social-cultural networks.

How the social workers can bring spirituality in the social work practice are:

• The social workers need to know themselves first and their spiritual beliefs and need to examine themselves to see whether their spiritual and religious beliefs would counteract them in a certain situation. They would be able to find out the certain situations that they can’t practice in.
• The social workers need to include questions regarding spiritual and religious beliefs while assisting people.
• The social workers need to educate themselves and keep on learning. When someone brings up any religious or spiritual beliefs, which are unknown to the social worker, then the social workers need to learn about it, or they can consult the other professionals who know about it.
• The social workers also need to adapt themselves to find value in the beliefs that are different from their beliefs.

This study will follow the implications of the social work policy, education, practice. The goal of the service-focused social work practice like social work education is to prepare the students for practice, which is non-discriminatory, skilful and knowledgeable in respect to all the kind of diversity, involving the wide variety of religion and spirituality (Keefe, 2017). If the social workers face that the incorporations of clients spirituality seem to be justified and the client is directed, then the social workers need to implement more specialised training in their service focused social work based on spirituality should be considered. The social workers provide services by giving quality care to their clients, graduate programs, which would develop the role of spirituality in enhancing mental health (Mulder, 2015).

Role of Spiritual Competency in Social Work

During the services of the social work practice, this is not mandatory that the social workers need to subscribe the same religious belief as of the client, but the social workers need to be conscious that unconsciously they do not affect the client’s religious belief. This can create a negative impact on the mental disorder client. Sometimes a person’s spiritual life may be deep-rooted in religion. During the implications of the social work practice, people can share out about the services they attend, their rituals and the holidays they participate in. They can also discuss the religious text and the teachings, which help them to find out the meanings. Thus, social workers need to learn how to be comfortable with various religious practices and religious beliefs by binging a bible verse, which creates a great positive impact on the client. In the initial stage of the discussion, the social workers identify, whether their client is interested in their own religious and spiritual values or not. There are clients who say that they are spiritual but not religious. When they are asked to define the meaning of the statement that they are spiritual but not religious, some can give definite answers whereas some cannot. Both of the cases lead to the amazing type of therapeutic interactions (Freeman, 2015). Thus, the social worker continues the process of treatment as per the beliefs and the views of the clients.

The social workers provide services by developing a stable environment for the young person as the mental illness in the young people needs to be recovered. The social workers often face cases of depression and arrogance in children while practising their services; they need to grow the stability, which gives children the opportunity to learn and makes them feel that they belong to someone. The services for the children or the young people suffering from anxiety, depression and mental illness, is the delicate social work practice as the social worker need to handle these problems patiently by introducing spiritual activities on them. This helps them to develop their religious values and spiritual beliefs. The social workers have an ample amount of the training in ensuring that they are practising within the scope of their competency. According to the NASW (2011) affirms that in the services of the social work, the cultural competences in the social work is the life going, ongoing practice and includes the importance of the religion and the spirituality in the lives of the clients (Beckett, Maynard & Jordan, 2017). In the services of the social work practice, collecting the information regarding the client’s history and increasing the spiritual interest is essential for solving client’s problems. The social services for the older peoples suffering from depression, mental illness involves a special program involving them, involving them in various spiritual activities, making them feeling belonging to society and other. All these social services including spiritual activities help to recover the older people suffering from depression, anxiety and other.

Conclusion

Conclusion:

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that spirituality was the imperative constituent in the beginning phase of the social work practice. The 1950’s and the 1960’s explored the spiritual shift as the shift of the social worker has distanced itself from the sectarian roots and proceed towards the secular orientations, which results in the strict boundaries between the therapy and the religion. The mission to integrate the spiritual side of the humans in the social work practice showed the importance of spirituality in the therapy. The integration of spirituality into the psychotherapy and the mental health services shows the evidence of the benefits and the need for such integration. The above discussion shows that in the human service profession, the spirituality is recognized as the important client’s strength, which can aid the client’s wellbeing. The research studies suggest that social workers are interested in using the spiritual treatment for mitigating mental health.

The lack of training on the proper implementation of spiritual interventions can cause uncertainty in the social work practice regarding the ethical guidelines.  There are many factors described in the above discussion, which shows the impact of spirituality in the person’s coping styles. This can provide access to social support and increase social capital; both of these are acknowledged for promoting and sustaining the emotional and psychological wellbeing. The expressions of spirituality can affect the lifestyles and can encourage the individuals to limit the illness-related behaviour like smoking, drinking and other. The social services for the older people and the young ones those who are suffering from the anxiety, depression and mental illness, need to be patiently treated, that is by growing their interest on the spiritual values and involving them in the spiritual activities. This research study will sketch out the picture of how the spirituality social work practice will have an impact on the mental health-related problems. The number of implications and the recommendations are described in this study, which provides the more colourful picture of the spiritual effect on the mental health. This research will be based on extensive reviews of the past and the present literature on the topic of spirituality in social work practices. The categories found out from the research study, and the literature will help to yield the more consistent outcome of the research work. This is expected that from the researches it will be found out that the spiritual activities and the spiritual involvement have a great impact on recovering the mental illness and helps people to get relief from the health-related problems.

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