Okay. Well, I see that it
is 2:00 p.m. So, let's get
started. Welcome, everyone,
and thank you for
joining. Good afternoon.
You are here at the
NIH Spiritual and
Religious Competencies
Project October webinar
and we are so glad you are
here for what promises to
be a very interesting and
informative presentation.
My name is Joan Romaine.
I'm the founder and chair of
this group which began here
at the NIH four years ago
this month. Today it is my
great honor and privilege to
introduce to you our guest
speaker: Dr. Joseph Currier
from the University of
South Alabama in mobile.
Dr. Joseph Currier will be
presenting his talk:
"Training Mental Health
Professionals in Spiritual and
Religious Competencies: Current
Status and Future Directions."
As background, Dr. Joseph
Currier is a licensed
psychologist and professor of
psychology at the University
of South Alabama. His
research broadly focuses on
understanding and addressing
the multifaceted role of
spirituality and religion in
trauma, moral injury, and
oath mental health challenges
in education, training and
clinical practice. He has
published numerous peer
review articles in support of
these lines of working
along with two works with
the American Psychological
Association entitled trauma,
meaning and spirituality,
translating research into
clinical practice. And
addressing moral injury in
clinical practice. His work has
been funded by the John
Templeton Foundation, the
Robert Wood Johnson foundation,
the Templeton world charity
foundation and SAMSA. He
recently served as principal
investigator at the spiritual
and religious competency
project at John Templeton
Foundation funded grant aimed
as catalyzing systemic and
cultural changes in mental
health fields to train
clinicians in attending to
people's fate and spirituality.
He also served as director
of clinical training for
the clinical and counseling
psychology doctoral program
at USA from 2015 to 2020,
clinical director for veterans
recovery resources from 2018
to 2022. And was a Robert
Wood Johnson foundation
clinical scholar fellow
from 2018 to 2021. He is
the incoming editor for APA
spirituality and clinical
practice starting inm January
2025. So impressive.
Before I turn it over to
Dr. Joseph Currier. I would
like to ask that everyone
please stay muted with your
videos off unless you are
speaking. At the end, we'll
ask you to turn your videos
back on and we'll have time
for questions and answers.
And you can certainly put
your questions in the chat
or raise your hand and we'll
try to get to you as many
as possible. As you can
see, we are recording this
webinar. So we will post
it on our Spiritual and
Religious Competencies Project
interest group website as
soon as possible after the
talk. So with that, it is my
great pleasure to turn it
over to you, Dr. Joseph
Currier, please take it away.
Thank you.
>> Dr. Currier: Thank you
for the introduction, Joan.
And thank you for everyone
being here today for this live
talk. As Joan highlighted,
this talk will summarize
some of our recent efforts
to catalyze research and
training in spiritual and
religious competencies for
mental health professionals
in the third millennium that
we find ourselves in. Some
of you might be wondering
like what are spiritual
religious competencies?
Well, in a nutshell, these
would be facets of attitudes,
knowledge and skill that
will ideally improve
clinician and researcher's
responsiveness to spiritual
and religious aspects of
people's likes who may they
serve or study in
many of our cases.
I think before I dive in, you
know, I want to acknowledge
receiving generous funding
and other supports from the
John Templeton Foundation.
Also, I want to thank the
many callyings, research
staff, graduate students, and
other collaborators who made
this Spiritual and Religious
Competencies Project
possible. You know, so I'm
sitting here today in this
really privileged position
because I get to be, you know,
a bit of the messenger to
relay the findings and the
resources and the successes,
you know, that many talented
and hardworking people pulled
off, you know. Over the
last several years.
I think one of my chief goals
today is, you know, simply
to educate you about the
different training, resources
and tools that our team
has developed over the last
several years. So all of --
the findings, the tools and
the resources will be made
freely available in a repository
on SRCP website. So if you
are interested you can
check out this QR code or use
the direct link, you know,
that bottom of this slide,
and begin to familiarize with
the website. Many of the
resources I'm going to talk
about today are not yet
posted on our website, we are
working really hard to compile
everything, and organize
everything, and get everything
to you for free, hopefully,
by the end of the year. Fingers
crossed. That's our timeline.
All right! So what was
the "Training Mental Health
Professionals in Spiritual and
Spiritual and Religious
Competencies Project all about.
As you can see on this
slide, our project consisted
of four strategic and
interdisciplinary initiatives
all of which aimed to
improve graduate and
postgraduate training in major
mental health professions
in the United States,
including counseling,
marriage and family therapy,
psychology, clinical counseling
and psychology programs
and social work.
In many ways, you know, our
team, you know, attempted to
follow in the footsteps of
leaders from medical
professions, such as Kristina,
David, Herold, and others who
led a similar Templeton
funded initiative for
medical schools in psychology
residents projects a quarter
of a century ago. In many
ways we attempted to achieve
and replicate their successes
in our professions over
the last several years.
Here's a list of our full
investigator team. I imagine
that many of you recognize
names on this list. I think
for any newcomers to this
scientific interest group,
just want to point you to a
prior talk that Dr. Fox gave
for our second initiative
focusing on enhancing clinical
training resources and
tools. So Dr. Fox gave his
talk about a year ago. You
can find a link to the talk
on the website. And Dr. Fox
gives more of a panorama
kind of in-depth look at our
second subproject then I'm
going to be able to give
toed. If you're interested
I encourage you to check it
out.
Okay. Before I move onto kind
of our findings, you know,
and resources that we have
generated over the last
several years, I first want
to pause and hit on several of
the foundational assumptions
that guided our team's
work. So I'll put forth the
very kind of foundational
question around: Why is
spirituality and religion
relevant to the training of
mental health professional
well, first off, is that,
that we as mental health
professionals have an ethical
imperative to attend to
people's spiritual and
religion as core areas of
diversity. Using our American
Psychological Association
ethics code and accreditation
standards you can see here,
one example. Virtually
every medical or healthcare
profession now includes religion
and oftentimes spirituality
in their definitions and
conceptions of diversity,
intersectionality, and
oftentimes wellness
and functioning.
I think another, you know,
reason that really motivated
our team to do this work,
you know, entails the sheer
prevalence of beliefs,
practices, and communities that
are somehow organized according
to people's spirituality.
You know, so the table
here, you know on this slide,
this is from a previous
publication from Harvard
national consort I on
psychosocial stress,
spirituality and
health, has can see, I
think, just reviewing kind
of major racial groups, you
know, here in the United
States, know, only 5% of folks
would not view themselves
as being a spirituality
and/or religious person.
So what that means is that,
you know, 90% Ormo of our
general population are possibly
drawing upon spiritual and
religion to inform their
identify, lifestyle, or major
decisions, you know that
may affect their health or
mental health in some really
important ways. Right?
You know, and I mean, this
particular study, you know
from the Harvard group, this
is just one example, I imagine
many of you could share
other nationwide surveys that
have been conducted over
recent years to highlight the
prevalence of spirituality
and religiousness
here in our country.
Also, we now know, you know,
from an increasing number
of basic research studies,
you know, that the good
news, but also the bad news,
about spirituality is that it
is highly powerful for mental
health. Right? So, on the
one hand, you know that we
know, probably because of many
of the studies that people
who are on this talk, you
know, conducted, you know
that we have a growing
number of pretty rigorous
longitudinal, you know, and
other scientific studies,
you know that highlight ways
that you know spirituality
may enhance resilience or
promote recovery when mental
health issues occur in
people's lives. But we are
learning more and more about a
darker side of spirituality.
We have a growing base
of studies that are
highlighting ways that
spirituality can cause distinct
problems that might actually
diminish wellbeing and recovery
at individual, fuMel I, or
even higher community or
societal levels. Right? So
Ken gave a talk on spiritual
struggles for this group
in the past year, where he
kind of provided the state
of the evidence related to
spiritual struggles and
encouraged people to check
that out. We have this
double-sided nature of
spirituality and mental health
and that both sides of this
dynamic, you know, getting
more and more evidence to
suggest that they're highly
relevant for mental health care.
Also, I think, going beyond,
you know, our basic research
studies, you know, we also
have a growing literature
of translational studies.
You know, that seek to apply
these findings and these
resources to clinical
practice or applied work.
Right? So I'm just going to
share one example study that
colleagues and I conducted
over recent years. So we
did a large practice-based
evidence study across 37
clinics and setting practice
sing spirituality integrated
psychotherapy. These are
treatings that clinicians are
making careful deliberative
attempts to adapt their
techniques and the topics of
the treatment according to
their client's spirituality
or faith and their client's
preferences for incorporating
the areas of livessive the
treatment. This is a project
led by Dr. Scott Richards
with support from another
Templeton grant. And
essentially, we had clinicians,
you know, get equipped and
supported to implement a
two-part routine outcome
monitoring system in their
clinics. Right?
So first, the clinicians
administered you know, session
to session assessments of
spiritual distress and
psychological distress at every
session. At the end of each
session, the clinicians
were ask to complete a
checklist about the specific
techniques, interventions,
kind of other areas were
clinical decisionmaking they
made have made in that session.
Right? Including different
ways that they may have
attempted to attend to their
client's faith or spirituality.
So, this was kind of a one
-of-a-kind study. Because we
were able to see in realtime
what are the routine ways
that clinicians like actually
attempt to address client
spirituality over the course
of psychotherapy or counseling.
As you can see, their clinical
techniques and strategies
could be grouped into four
broad categories. Right? So,
in the upper left quadrant
you can see, you know, the
large percentages of times in
which clinicians implemented
basic strategies like
simply listening empathically
to client's spiritual issues
or concerns or discussing
the spiritual dimension
of client's problems or
solutions. You know, as well as
what might be considered
more advanced techniques or
strategies, you know, such as
incorporating spiritual
practices in the context of
a session. Or discussing
virtues with possible spiritual
or religious significance
for a given client. As
well as, you know, supporting
you know, client's perceived
connection with god or
the design in many of their --
design in many of their cases.
What were the clinical
outcomes of the routinely
delivered spiritual delivered
psychotherapy. We used
growth curve modeling to
understand the overall average
trajectory of changes in
psychological distress and
spiritual distress. You can see
the psychological distress,
we would hope to find, I
think clients generally had
significant clinical
improvement. You know, over
their first three months of
engaging in spiritually
integrated psychotherapy at
the level we tend to find in
other psychotherapy research
studies about a .1 effect size.
So I think that was interesting
and encouraging. But the
real holy grail of this
study, if you will indulge
me with the religious
metaphor, we were also able to
explore how the use of different
spiritual interventions
was associated with the
client's outcomes over the
course of their treatment.
You know, what we found was
that of all the different
ways that clinicians may
address their client's spiritual
or religious identities,
it was interventions in
the basic skills categories
that more often than not, you
know, were associated with
favorable rates and duration
of clinical improvement.
Right? So, this was
encouraging for us. As we
think about, you know,
strategies for training mental
health professional, that
maybe by training, you know,
these basic skills, you know,
that might be considered kind
of more generalist training,
that we might actually be
able to really make a
difference, you know,
in enhancing clinical
practice and maybe
even enhancing our research.
You know, related to the
effectness of psychotherapy
and/or clinical practice
activities that we may do on
a day in and day out basis.
So that sounds really easy.
Right? Well, it's not really
all that easy. You know,
so I think, as I have
highlighted, we have a growing
number of basic research
studies in spirituality and
mental health. We've made a
lot of progress in the over
recent decades in terms of
developing psychometrically
sound assessments of
different spiritual factors.
Right? We're, we're --
doing more and more applied,
you know, clinical research.
Right? But we also have a
problem because like many
other research areas, you
know, a lot of our advancements
are not necessarily
informing routine
clinical practice.
Right? So how do we
account for this science
practice gap with respect to
spirituality research,
routine clinical practice?
Well, I think there's probably
many determinants or factors
that are at play here.
But our SRCP team
sort of believes that
lack of professional
training is possibly
the most pressing cause of
this science practice gap
right now. But it is also, you
know, on the more promising
side the most rectifiable
issue. Right? That we can do
something about this right
now. And that's what we were
trying to accomplish. You
know. Over the last three
years in our Spiritual
and Religious Competencies
Project. So I'm going to
kind of go through the high
points now from our four
initiatives.
You know, so our third
initiative that was lead by Dr.
Holly and clay aim today try
to get kind of a accurate
kind of baseline assessment
of where, you know, our target
mental health professions
actually are in terms of
suspending to spirituality and
religion within their programs.
So to do this, we did a
nationwide needs assessment
survey. You know, of four
faculty from all accredited
programs across the United
States. So this was a
pretty major undertaking.
We, you know, had graduate
research assistants and
staff kind of review project
websites and, you know, call
information for what we
learned was about 12,000 core
faculty. You know, across the
country . who would be
eligible for the survey. We
implemented the survey in spring
of 2022. So if you think back
to what was going on there,
we were kind of right on
the heels of the COVID
pandemic. We were not quite
sure how many busy stressed out
faculty we were going to
get to complete our survey.
We were happy, we got a 15%
response rate, which is pretty
normal in a survey of this sort.
You can see the descriptive
details for our final sample
picture here. We're still
in the process of kind of
finalizing our analysis,
we hope to get an article
submitted here in the next
few months. I'm just going
to hit some of the high
points today. If you would
like more details about the
needs assessment survey,
Dr. Holly put together a QR
code. If you click on this
a
sign-up sheet and provide
your contact information.
Once the materials are
available, you will be one of
the first people to get them.
So I highlighted in order to
make the survey possible, we
needed to initially create
a census data base of the
12,000 core faculty across
counseling, marriage and family
therapy, psychology, and
social work programs across
the United States. So
encouragingly, I think because
we used this approach, we
could then compare how much
our sample, the people who
like actually responded to
our survey, actually mirror
the population that we're
trying to generalize to our
inside. And we often don't
have this luxury when we do
surveys of this sort. If you
look at the middle column,
you can see the percentages
of the respondents that
went to different types of
institutions or came from
different regions of the
country, or at religiously
affiliated institutions and
those who weren't. You can
eto the representative of
different disciplines. And
compare the middle column to
the column on your left for
the overall population. You
can see our sample was pretty
representative, at least
according to the disnuinary
and institutional factors
which was pretty encouraging
to us. We don't know if the
sample was representative
in terms of the faculty
religious and spiritual
backgrounds, that is another
question altogether. But for
these variables we were
pretty excited about
the representativeness
of the sample.
What do we find? The main
themes we are learning from
this needs assessment survey?
I think one, we're finding
this in our other initiatives
as well. You know, that
most graduate faculty in
this day and age are pretty
open to training students in
spiritual and religious
competencies. Also,
most faculty are
pretty confident about
their ability to do so. Okay?
And that's awesome. The
issue here, we find this in
other surveys of this sort,
is there's a little bit of
a mismatch between faculty
perception of their --
their ability and what their
actually doing on a day and day
out basis. Right? So we
found, unfortunately, that
although most faculty are
really open, they are confident,
but you know, in roughly
half of the cases they are
not necessarily addressing
spirituality and religion in
some of the really important
clinical training activities
that they're doing.
Particularly with respect to
assessment training and
intervention training. Right?
You know, which unfortunately,
these are going to be the
major clinical activities
that most mental health
professional are going to end
up doing. These are kind of
bread and butter activities.
Unfortunately, only half
of the time were faculty
actually addressing religious
and spirituality in their
assessment and intervention
training.
Also, you know, we found
apparent differences across
the four professions with
respect to the faculty's
perceptions of their self
efficacy or their attitudes.
Feasibility and behavior
regarding attending
to spirituality and
religion in their
work with students. Right?
So where were the differences
at? So using, I think, Dr.
Holly's religious and sir
integrated practice and
assessment scale, using the
four subscales we found that
faculty from psychology
graduate programs, this would
be my tribe here, that us,
psychology faculty generally
compared with faculty from
the other professions we
have less self-efficacy, we
have lower attitudes about
addressing religion and
spirituality in our teaching
our training, less perceived
feasibility, and we're not
doing it quite as much.
Right? So, I think overall,
I think these findings would
suggest that social work,
counseling, marriage and
family therapy, they all seem
to be a bit equivalent in
terms of where faculty are
at. But maybe psychology
programs maybe we are a little
bit further behind or maybe
there is a little bit more
work to do with respect to
psychology programs such as
the one that I'm part of.
All right. So, moving on to
our fourth initiative that
was led by Dr. Cassie. We
wanted to answer a question
around like, okay. Like
what are the barriers to
training students in spiritual
and religious competencies
that we're seeing that --
maybe people are way more
open-minded then we thought
they would be. But the
training isn't happening in
a lot of programs. So we
want to try to understand the
reasons for these gaps or
these barriers. So, to do
so, you know, we ran a series
of focus groups and expert
informative interviews with
72 leaders from, you know,
our targeted professions. So
these included people like
program officers, you know,
in professional organizations,
directs of clinical
training, accreditation and
licensing board members,
officers in different
professional groups,
right? So these
are people that were in
positions of influence. And
also like highly knowledgeable
and experienced when it
came to just the ins and out
of mental health training.
This slide just simply
shows the geographic
spread of our participants.
Right. We did in-depth
qualitative interviews with
each of these leaders to try to
understand from their view
what are the barriers and
facilitators and opportunities
for promoting training. And
in doing this qualitative
research we learned there are
logistic barriers as well
as psychologically-driven
reasons for a lack of training
in spirituality and
religion within graduate
education programs.
So, from a logistic view,
if you're a gradual faculty
member, such as myself, this
is not going to be surprising
to you at all. Right? We
found, we heard from nearly
every single participant
that there is just not enough
space in their curriculum to
add anything else.
Right? And even if they wanted
to, they have this problem
because they don't have a
colleague or a faculty
member who actually has the
expertise and the comfort to
teach the content. Right?
So, these are sort of like
the practical realities that
many graduate programs
are dealing with.
From a psychological view,
participants discussed
discomfort about like maybe
prioritizing certain world
views and traditions over
others within their courses.
Maybe upsetting nonreligious
students who have possibly
had painful experiences with
an organized religion of
some sort. Or I think, as
our mental health proFengs
become more and more mindful
about issues of oppression
and social injustice and how
that operates at systemic
levels, many of our faculty
were highly concerned about
maybe making things worse
along these lines. By
teaching on these subjects.
Right? So, these are kind
of major concerns. You
know, that many faculty and
programs are kind of
grappling with. Right?
So, what we did, you know, with
this qualitative information
that we gathered, you
know, on our fourth initiative
was, we then drew upon
principles of dissemination
and implementitation science
to develop what we call a
targeted system's change
roadmap that attempted to
kind of envision a course, you
know, for possible pathways
towards solutions that might
overcome the barriers that
I shared just a moment ago.
If you were to consider all
of the possible strategic
priorities or objectives that
might be relevant for increasing
training in spirituality
and religion, many of our
leaders who are more
scientifically minded, I imagine
like many of you listening to
this talk today. Many of
them shared that hey, you need
better evidence. We don't
yet have rigorous enough
evidence to really demonstrate
the need for training in
spiritual religious
competencies. Right? So,
focus on research. Do better
studies. Do more rigorous
research. Right? That was
one of the priorities that
immerged.
Another priority, I highlighted
a moment ago, many of the
faculty said, hey, you
need to focus on
faculty development.
You need to provide
opportunities for faculty
to kind of fill in some gaps
possibly in their own training
backgrounds and provide
support and equipping for
faculty to teach on the
topics. That is number four on
our roadmap. The two areas
why focused most of our
attention on the last couple of
years was area one, try to
define the basics fasseds
of spiritual religious
competent that's important,
we heard from many of our
leaders, hey, we recognize
this is important, but we
have no idea what this means
or teach or target with our
students or trainees. And
then also, a very common
message that we received from
the leaders was a need for
high quality training tools
and materials that they could
utilize in their work. Right?
So, very common message
was: Hey, we're really
busy. We don't have time
you know the development like
new materials ourselves. We
don't even know if we have
the expertise to do it. But
if you give us really high
quality training tools
and resources we will
make use of them. Right?
So we ended up focusing much
of our work over the last
couple of years, you know, on
these two areas. I just want
to hit the high points from
some of these efforts from
our team.
Just like early on, one of
the key questions that we
grappled with when it comes
trying to define the essential
facets of spiritual religious
competence was sort of
this question: At minimum
how much competence related
to spirituality and religion
is enough for the average
mental health professional?
Imagine people here today
listening to this talk,
participating in the scientific
interest group, you are
probably not the average
mental health or medical
pr
ofessional. Right? We're a bit
of a specialized group.
Right? I think it is awesome.
Right? But we need to also
think about our colleagues
who probably are never
going to participate in this
scientific interest group, as
much as we want them to. Right?
So, what's enough for the
average person. Right?
So along these lines, many
healthcare and medical
professions will
draw a distinction
between, you know, what
we might consider generalist
training. More basic training
that is universal that
is expected of everyone, right?
And kind of more specialized
or advanced training.
Right? So you know, if we
were to, I think draw on a
really helpful continuum that
Saunders and colleagues
developed over a decade ago
now, I think we can, you know,
assert that ideally, you
know, all mental health
professionals will hopefully
spirituality avoidant care.
Right? This is whether
because of bias, ignorance,
lack of training, lack of
comfort, whatever, for
whatever reason, spiritualitily
avoidant care is exactly what
it sounds like. Instances
when a clinician, avoids,
neglects spiritual religious
aspects of their client
and other person's life.
Right? We want to take that
off of the map. We look at
the other categories from
spiritual integrated care,
directed care, I'm not going
to go into the details of
the categories, except to
highlight as we move across
the continuum, right? We're
going to expect kind of more
sophisticated, more advanced
level of expertise for the
person that is trying to
practice at this level. Right?
And that at the end of the
day, if we're going to try
to make recommendations about
universal training, it's
probably going to need to
happen here at this spiritual
conscious level, right? For
many of us, we may go well
-beyond this as far as our
expertise, but for the average
mental health professional
this is the level that we
choose to really prioritize in
our Spiritual and Religious
Competencies Project.
All right. So, what are
basic facets of awareness,
attitudes, knowledge, skill,
that, you know, mental health
professionals may universally
seek to cultivate? I
think, developed by our task
force with division 36 at
the American Psychological
Association, here are an
emerging set of professional
practice guidelines for
addressing spirituality and
religion that might also
apply to other mental health
disciplines. This is a
task force that is led by
doctors, we're still kind of
working out some really key
details, but this is kind of
what we come up with right
now.
So if wetware thing about
attitudes or awareness,
we might hope that --
psychologists and other
mental health professionals
are self-aware how they own
spiritual religious background
might influence their practice
with spiritual diverse
people. And in terms of
knowledge, I just highlighted
a moment ago, we would hope
that maybe all mental health
professionals have the
capacity to conceptualize
different ways that spirituality
can both support and also
diminish wellbeing and
recovery. Right? Again,
they're knowledgeable about
the double-sided nature of
spirituality and mental health.
From a skills standpoint,
we kept things pretty basic
here. Right? So, our task
force committee at this point
would suggest that maybe
at minimum we just want all
mental health professionals to
be able to discuss spiritual
and religious identities
in the same way that they
can attend to other areas
of diversity. Like race,
gender, sexual orientation.
Right? And ideally,
we want mental health
professionals to work within
their scope of competence,
when they encounter those
boundaries they have an
openness and a willingness to
collaborate with chaplains and
or spiritual care professionals
in the same way that
hopefully, we are collaborating
with other healthcare
professionals in the
service of our clients.
All right. So I'm going
to kind of move into, you
know, that fifth area on the
roadmap now, which is focusing
on developing training
resources. Right? And all of
these training resources will
be uploaded to our repository
on our website, again,
hopefully, by the
end of the year.
I think as Dr. Fox highlighted
in his earlier talk for
this group, we led a request
for proposal competition
for our clinical training
initiative back in the fall of
2021. Seems like a long time
ago. And in doing so, here
are the five criteria that
really served as our compass
in trying to select proposals
we believe could have the
most wide-ranging impacts
into the mental health stream
into respect to generalist
training. We received 70
applications and funded 11
teams over the past two years
to develop tools and resources
for practical courses,
clinical supervise and other
clinical training activities.
So if you are interested in
accessing these resources,
you simply need to go to the
home page of the website.
And you'll see the tab up
there. That I is circled
labeled resources. If you
click on the resources tab,
it will take you to our
repository. Again that
repository is pretty bare right
now. But again, hopefully,
by the end of the year we
will have that thing populated
with all of our training,
tools and resources. But
I just want to highlight a
couple of the resources that
you'll be able to find
in that repository.
As of right now, if you
click on the website, the
one available resource is our
spiritual competence training
program and mental health
or SCT-M, H for short.
Along with Michelle and
Ken, our first subproject
initiative focused on enhancing,
evaluating and disseminating
this SCH-MH program for use
in graduate mental health
education. This is a
program that was originally
developed for continuing
education, for practicing
mental health professionals
after they graduated from tear
graduate programs and moved
into independent practice.
This a program developed on
a planning grant also from
the John Templeton Foundation.
On the basis of kind of the
state of the evidence within
our psychology of religious
and spirituality area and
also according to best
practices with respect to adult
learning methods. Here are
the modules. You know, for
this training program. You
know, so there are eight 45
minute online modules. You
know, that deal with kind of
different topics. You know,
related to spirituality and
religious competencies.
These were based, you know
-- strongly according to the
earlier research related to
identifying core areas of
attitudes, knowledge and
skills for psychology in
particular.
All right. So, what did we
do for this first subproject
initiative. Well, to
enhance and Taylor this
continuing education program,
called SCT-MH to make it
appropriate for use in
graduate education we had
three phases of tasks and
objectives. So first
we conducted another
RFP competition. This
one back in spring
of '22. And we were able
to recruit 20 faculty from
accredited programs in
psychology, social work
and counseling. We then
worked very closely with the
faculty instructor to teach
them how to teach the SCT
-MH program to students in
their programs. We also
coached and guided them to
replace 15% of the content in
one of their required clinical
courses with our new hybrid
SCT-MM curriculum. So
rather than developing
a standalone course
in spirituality and
religion, which a lot
of programs do and I think
it is great. We have an
elective course in our program
that I get to teach every
few years. Students seem to
really enjoy it. That's not
going to be feasible for
most programs. Also it
is not going to allow for
generalist training. So we
wanted to develop an integrated
curriculum strategy in
which training and spirituality
religious competencies
would be infused within the
context of naturally occurring
required courses which
meant that every single
student was going to get
access to the material.
Okay. In our implantation
phase, the faculty members
than taught the hybrid SCT-MH
curriculum in the context of
a course they were planning
to teach anyways. Okay.
And in doing so, the faculty
were not necessarily experts
in spirituality and mental
health. Right? Some of
them were. But many of them
weren't. And that instead you
know, they operated as
facilitators of the training
program. Okay? And they used a
flipped classroom approach.
Meaning that students would
watch the weekly modules
outside of class. And then
when they came to class, we
provided an instructor guide
book with weekly exercises
for the students to really
crystallize and deepen their
learning. Such as
guided discussions or
role-playing exercises.
In our evaluation phase, you
know, we wanted to assess
feasibility, acceptability,
and effectiveness of using
this integrated curricular
strategy. And to do so, we
used a wait list control group
design, meaning you know,
that we invited students to
complete an outcome evaluation
survey at the very start
of their course in the
spring of '23. Right? Over
the next six weeks, we coached
the faculty instructors
not to talk about spirituality
and religion at all with
students, which was not a
big deal, most of them were
not planning to do that
anyways. We got to midcourse,
we repeated our assessments
again at the six-week point
from six weeks to 12 weeks
the faculty instructors
then each implemented the
hybrid SCT-MH curriculum. We
assessed outcomes again
at the end of the class.
These were the assessments
that we used in this study.
Here are the -- descriptive
features of our graduate
student sample. If you're
familiar with the changing
landscape of religiousness
and spirituality here in
the United States, you'll
recognize it is not surprising
only about a third of the
students would identify as
being a very religious person
or a moderately religion
person. Whereas about 2/3 of
the sample being a very
spiritual person or a moderately
spiritual person. And only
about half of the students,
you know, had received prior
professional training in
spirituality and religion.
Right? So this was is pretty
novice year set of folks
that you expect to find in
a graduate program. This
slide simply shows our sample
sizes across the three
assessments. The students were
not required to participate
in the research. They were
required to do the SCT-MH
program because it is part of
a class they needed to
complete. But we did provide
gift cards and thankfully, we
had a 90% response rate.
So 309 students at our type
of assessment. And then we
were able to retain about 90%
of that type I sample over
the course of our next two
assessments which we
felt really good about.
All right. What did we find?
Well, I think, first of
all, you know, our current
troll waiting period worked.
So if you look at these
trajectory lines from time one
the time two. They look
pretty flat, but in student
self-efficacy deceased, but we
did not see any improvement
in or out come measures from
time one the time two. But
from time two the time's
three. We found in general
across the board students
perceived significant
improvements across all of
our outcomes. We also had
qualitative process based
assessms I'm not going to
share today, but in general,
most students perceived this
approach as being relevant
to their training and
helpful to their training the
we felt pretty good about.
All right. This SCT-MH
outcome study was published
last month in plus one, if you
want a copy of the article
and read the details about
the study, click here on the
QR code, otherwise you are
welcome to email me, I will
be glad to share a copy of
the study.
All right. I know I'm moving
towards the top of the hour
here, but I want to share
kind of one more clinical
training resource that we
developed. This one from our
second subproject initiative.
Mainly because like I
want to kind of provide a
picture about the type of
training programs and resources
that you'll expect to find
in our repository. So to
do so, I'm going to preview
the work that Dr. Black and
her team did just to give
you kind of a picture of
the type of project that we
attempted to fund and
support in our project.
You know, so if you remember
those guiding principles
that I had, you know, on a
slide a moment ago, I think,
Stephanie and her team did
a great job of adhering
closely to the principles.
Right? So, from a conceptual
view, this project didn't
attempt to treat spirituality
and religion at this
standalone disparate area. You
know, of diversity or
wellness. Right? But
rather used the multicultural
orientation framework which
is one of the major paradigms
for guiding multicultural
diversity training right
now in psychology programs
and other mental health
professions. So from a
conceptual standpoint they
attempted to work within a
framework that is already
getting used a lot. Right?
So, this is something that,
you know, that was very
practical. Also, in terms
of kind of how they choose to
organize or implement the
training, I think Stephanie
and her team developed a
workbook and a set of
training videos that closely
adhered to the deliberate
practice model of clinical
training which is, you know,
an evidence-based approach
to helping students acquire
skill based competencies.
Right? So, whether
conceptually or practically,
this project did a good
job of trying to infuse
spirituality competency
training within the context
of frameworks and approaches
that graduate programs are
already putting their trust
in and they are already using
a lot.
So what I want to do now for
the next few minutes I just
want to play a couple of
the videos, you know, that
Stephanie and her team
developed. Right? So if you're
familiar with deliberate
practice, the way that this
works is students are presented
with a client or a patient
vignette. Right? And then
they then need to respond to
that person as though, you
know, they were the therapist
or the clinician at that
moment. So what this team,
in addition to the workbook,
they developed a series of
client vignettes and then,
you know, to make things as
clear as possible, they also
then worked with kind of
experts in this area, you
know, to provide example
responses, you know, for
someone who might be dealing
with religious or spiritual
concern in the context of
counseling or therapy. I'm
going to clay the client
vignette. For the sake of
time, I'm just going to may
one of the example therapist
responses. Again, just to
give you a picture of the
types of projects that we, you
know, attempted to support.
[ Video playing ]
>> So these past few weeks
-- I haven't been able to
sleep. I have been very
stressed because the last
few weekends I have been up
with friends. I have been
drinking alcohol a lot.
And I -- slept with another
girl. And I don't know what
this means. I don't know
if -- I liked it. But this
is not the way that I was
raised. The way my mom and dad
raised me is to be Buddhist.
And we do not drink --
sex and relationships are
not okay. I -- I don't know
if this is right or wrong.
Or if this is who I am now.
>> Dr. Currier: Okay. So
that's the client vignette.
Right? So if you're a
practitioner yourself, you
may wonder how would you
respond in that moment? I'm
just going to provide two
brief example responses from
a couple of the experts that
Dr. Black and her
team worked with.
>> Hmm. Yeah. It sounds
really confusing between
the person that you are as a
Buddhist woman and the daughter
of your parents and the
person that you are now in
school. And they feel like
two different people almost
in your experience. Am I
getting that right?
>> Mia, thank you for trusting
me with, you know, hour
you're feeling. I can tell
this is really, it has been
something that you have
been thinking about that is
bothering you. And I can
hear like the conflict that
you have inside of you. And
that you're really worried
that your parents would be
disappointed and how things
are playing out. And before
we go to the part of whether
or not this is who you are
now, do you thing we could
back up a little bit and we
could talk about, you know,
how did you parents raise you?
What were their expectations?
And what's making you
experiment with alcohol and
especially, you said, a lot
of alcohol, and -- let's
talk about that part first
and then we'll get to some
of your worries about who you
are and who you are becoming.
[ End of video ]
>> Dr. Currier: All right.
So, pretty cool stuff. Right?
So if that grabbed your
interest, I would encourage
you to check out, you
know, the videos and other
resources that Dr. Black and
her colleagues developed.
They are all up on YouTube
right now. And it's been
publicly disseminated, we
will have it on our website
soon. And also, before I
kind of bring things to a
close and move into Q & A. I
want to highlight a couple
of other resources that were
team is developing. Right
now we're in the process of
developing an open access
handbook for Octobersferred
university press. You know,
oxpered university press,
that will provide a guide
book for using all of the
tools and resources we
developed on our project and in
in
addition to providing or
guidance for addressing
spirituality and relinn,
competencies in for training
mental health professionals.
And Dr. Fox and are I are
currently leading a special
section for APA's psychotherapy
in spirituality and
religious competency training
for psychotherapy. And --
this special issue is going
to feature many of the
empirical studies that we
funded in our second subproject
initiative as well as a number
of kind of other invited
submissions for people who
were not directly affiliated
with the spiritual religious
competencies project.
All right. Again, here's
information about the website.
I encourage you to check
out the website. Everything
I talked about today will
be up there at some point.
In the interim, thank you
for listening to this talk.
And here's my email address
if anybody would like to get
in contact with me. Really,
at any point this year or
next year or whenever.
So thanks for listening.
>> Joan: Great, well, thank
you so much, Dr. Joseph
Currier, for such a fantastic
and comprehensive presentation.
I wish we had even more
time than we do. But it
looks like we have
about six minutes for
questions and answers.
People can put them in the
chat or raise your hand. I'm
going to start us -- oh, I
see Chris, go ahead.
>> Yeah. Couldn't find the
little yellow hand symbol
there. Two questions, maybe
even partially a comment.
As you were talking later
on in particular, I couldn't
, I couldn't
help but think about the
Army chaplains and their
duty. And of course, my
experience with this is simply
watching the sitcom, "M.A.
S.H.." I don't have a lot
of knowledge in this, but
I imagine these folks were
never trained and they were
dealing with a lot of emotions.
I'm wondering if there's
literature out there about
their experiences and how
successful they were in
treating trauma on the field or
mental health issues in
realtime as they were
happening among these soldiers?
And also, I saw some stats
that you had about different
religions. I'm wondering if
you could say anymore
about almost a bit like the
chaplains, they had to -- help
anyone in need regardless of
the religion in particular.
And then in your video I
saw a woman who perhaps was
from a Muslim tradition. So
I'm wondering how, how that
works with different kinds
of religions and different
elements of spirituality?
>> Dr. Currier: Yeah. Thank
you for those questions. Chris?
>> Yeah.
>> Dr. Currier: Yeah, thanks
for those questions. So I
-- I don't know, you know,
much about kind of outcome
research related to kind of
chaplain C practice back in
the Vietnam era. I do
know that Army chaplains in
particular, Navy chaplains, I
think DOD has done an
incredible job with their
chaplain C training programs and
using chaplain assistance,
religious life specialists
within units. So I do think
that's a major part of the
puzzle in addressing the
suicide epidemic and military
connected populations, right?
To your second question
around like -- how, how could
these spiritual religious
competencies be applied in,
essentially working with
whoever comes to us, right?
And working within
the context of their
beliefs and their values.
And I think this is, this
is one of the key -- kind of
defining features of, these
competencies is that we
want them to be, you know,
inclusive of all peoples. So if
yo
u think about those competencies
I had up there, you know,
being self-aware of our
own religious backgrounds
and our backgrounds may
influence the way respond to
diverse people, being
knowledge clinical practice
about the different ways
spirituality religion may
help or harm military, right?
That, that if we possess
the companyitancies, ideally,
we're going to be effective
to work with folks across
the full spirituality
religious diversity spectrum
from people who are part of
different religious groups on
one end. And also, including
people who may identify
as secular or -- and, I think
this is one of the -- the
exciting developments of our
project is that historically,
you know, when we have
attempted to address religion
or spirituality, right?
I think much along the
lines of culturally adapted
psychotherapy or interventions,
we're usually only focusing
on a particular group of
people. Right? I think that
can be very, very helpful.
But when push comes to
shove, like we're not going
to necessarily be able to
train the average mental
health professional in
essentially changing their set
for every single person who
may come to them. Right?
So we want these to be
inclusive. We want them to
increase responsiveness. You
know, to spiritual religious
diversity in general.
>> Makes sense, thanks.
>> Dr. Currier: Yeah.
>> Joan: Great. Thank you,
all are so many questions.
I saw -- MATEJ's hand goes
up. So go ahead with
your question, please.
>> Hello. Can you hear me?
>> Joan: Yes. Nice
to see you again.
>> Yeah. Thank you. I am
a doctor, from sovac you
European Europe. So I joined
from urine.
>> Dr. Currier:
Good to see you.
>> I knew about the lecture.
Just out of interest, we
have some mental health
professionals in sovac
you, I'm doing residency in
psychology myself, I have been
interested in this area,
spirituality and religion
and health. Would you be
potentially in the future
interested in training or
providing some materials in
these areas to, to train
or help train mental health
professionals in this area?
Like, with some simple
things to start with?
>> Dr. Currier: Yeah.
Please, please reach out.
And like we're working -- you
know, with -- you know,
psychologists, you know, other
mental health professionals
in a number of other countries
right now. To, you know,
work to culturally adapt
some of the resources that
we've developed. You know,
and there are other resources
that I didn't have a chance
to talk about today. That
might be highly applicable to
your setting. Yes.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Dr. Currier: I would love to
talk more in the future. Yes.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Joan: Thank you. Doctor,
I saw you had a question.