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Many spiritually minded people just like you want real world change in their work and their lifestyles but become frustrated that the purely magickal or the purely psychological frameworks don’t quite deliver. We believe there’s a curious disconnect happening in therapy rooms, and we suspect most people aren’t even aware of it. For example, about 45% of Americans say that religion is ‘very important’ in their lives and about 39% of Britons believe that spirituality and science can be combined for healing purposes, yet in this 2016 study, most psychologists said they don’t receive the training to help them relate spirituality to mental health.
So if just under half of these adults say religion or spirituality is important in their lives, and certainly we have found that most people actually want the chance to discuss religion or spirituality during therapy, why aren’t these conversations happening?
We believe the answer lies in a rather uncomfortable truth about the mental health profession itself. To put it bluntly, there’s a significant blind spot in mental health care, which is particularly concerning when so many peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that religion and spirituality are relevant to mental health, and to people’s overall wellbeing and sense of meaning and purpose.
Throughout this article, we’ll explore why spirituality is so often overlooked in therapy, how it influences mental health, and what examples of spiritual therapy approaches might enhance your healing journey. Whether you identify as religious, spiritual-but-not-religious, or are simply curious about how these dimensions might support your mental health, understanding this hidden role of spirituality in therapy could change how you approach your own wellbeing entirely.
Why Spirituality Gets Left Out of the Therapy Room
The gap we’ve just outlined isn’t accidental, there are some very real reasons why mental health professionals struggle to address spiritual matters, even when their clients are practically begging for these conversations. The disconnect between what clients want and what they actually receive has roots that run deeper than simple oversight.
Whilst we believe the benefits of including spirituality in therapy are clear, we’d be naive to ignore the ethical minefield that comes with it. Without careful consideration, even well-intentioned therapists can cause more harm than healing, something none of us want on our conscience.
When Therapists Feel Out of Their Depth
Mental health professionals often experience genuine discomfort when spiritual or religious topics arise in therapy sessions. This paper from 2021 suggests that mental health professionals are notably less religious than the general population and consider religion and spirituality to be less important. This is certainly one interesting gap between therapists and their clients. When added to the suggestion that there exists a lack of training in this area generally, it is very easy to see why spirituality or religion just wouldn’t be a consideration for the average therapist.
It is also possible that some therapists genuinely believe they’re protecting clients by avoiding discussing spirituality altogether. Either to avoid their own biases from interfering (as both negative and positive biases can completely undermine therapeutic effectiveness) or for ethical reasons.
Therapists must examine their own spiritual beliefs in order to prevent countertransference issues. Some clinicians with anti-religious perspectives might pathologise normal religious practises and on the flip side, overly positive beliefs might lead to idealising religious clients or missing genuine psychological concerns. Neither approach serves the client well.
The General Medical Council puts it clearly: “You must not express your personal beliefs to patients in ways that exploit their vulnerability”. That sounds straightforward, but the practise is more nuanced than it appears.
Ethically sound work means recognising that people who seek out therapy may fall into various groups such as those who identify with specific traditions, those with personally defined spirituality, those disinterested in spirituality entirely, or those who are actively antagonistic towards spiritual matters. Each person deserves respect for where they are on their journey, not where you think they should be and obtaining informed consent before exploring spirituality remains essential.
Psychology’s Complicated History with Spirituality
The profession’s relationship with spirituality hasn’t always been this strained. It is said that William James, often called the “father” of American psychology, took for granted the essential role spirituality played in mental health. But later movements took psychology in a dramatically different direction.
Early pioneers of psychoanalysis and behaviourism were determined to establish psychology as a rigorous science that could be tested using scientific methods in psychology labs. Over time, mainstream psychology developed a reputation for either pathologising at best, or ignoring at worst, religious and spiritual beliefs. Even Carl Jung has not escaped, with many of his influential theories and ideas considered controversial because they lack scientific testing. So this means the complex rebranding of ‘psychology as hard science’ has created an enduring bias that continues to influence clinical practise today.
The Training Gap That No One Talks About
Perhaps the most glaring issue is the absence of proper professional training. We mentioned earlier that most (between 50% to 80%) of psychologists report receiving little or no training in spiritual competencies, and this was certainly our experience when we were in training.
According to this 2024 paper, most mental health graduate training programmes do not formally address spiritual or religious competencies and yet when these were integrated into 20 different graduate programmes, upon completion most graduates believed they would integrate these religious or spiritual components with future clients.
We believe that most psychology programmes still rely on clinical experiences and peer interactions that overlook spirituality as a teaching tool which of course completely fails to utilise the substantial body of research on the connection between spirituality and mental health.
The result? Most therapists genuinely lack the skills to properly assess spiritual needs, implement appropriate interventions, or effectively communicate with clients about their spiritual concerns. They’re flying blind in an area that could be crucial to their clients’ healing.
The Research That Changes Everything About Spirituality and Mental Health
Research consistently demonstrates something that many of us intuitively understand: spirituality plays a crucial role in mental health outcomes across diverse populations. We’ve witnessed this ourselves in conversations with clients and colleagues, yet the formal evidence continues to surprise us with its scope and depth. Understanding these connections helps explain why the absence of spiritual approaches in therapy represents such a significant missed opportunity.
When Life Has Meaning, Everything Changes
One of the most profound ways spirituality influences mental health lies in its capacity to provide a framework for meaning-making. We believe this goes far deeper than simple comfort or reassurance. For many, spirituality serves as a guide through life challenges, functioning as a pathway to resilience and maintaining wellbeing.
The connection between spirituality and meaning runs remarkably deep, with one 2023 study of those leaving the care system showing that people who believe their lives have meaning report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction. This isn’t merely correlation, spirituality can offer answers to fundamental questions about purpose and existence that many clients naturally bring to therapy.
What strikes us most is how spiritual frameworks provide individuals with integrated sets of beliefs, goals, and meanings which can be used in explaining life’s complexities and addressing personal struggles. It’s like having an internal compass that helps navigate uncertainty.
Most importantly, these benefits aren’t limited to traditionally religious people. The core experience involves connecting to something greater, which can take many forms depending on the individual. We’ve seen this manifest in countless ways from nature-based spirituality to secular mindfulness practises.
Spirituality as an Anchor During Life’s Storms
When we examine trauma and suffering, spirituality offers unique resources that complement traditional therapeutic approaches. Trauma survivors themselves have identified spirituality as a source of positivity, optimism, security, and meaning. This isn’t wishful thinking, it’s practical resilience.
After experiencing traumatic events, spirituality can help individuals find meaning in stressful situations and sometimes give up trying to control all that is uncontrollable to a higher power when appropriate. Oftentimes people can seek support from spiritual communities who can rally round and help maintain hope during difficult circumstances.
The Invisible Strength of Spiritual Resilience
The relationship between spirituality and emotional resilience continues to fascinate us. For example, looking back at the study into care leavers, those who made two or more spirituality references reported significantly higher life satisfaction than those with no spirituality references. Similarly, participants who incorporated spiritual themes regarding their relationship to God reported better mental health than those who did not.
Spiritual resilience involves engaging both internal resources, such as beliefs, strengths, values, and external resources to support one’s sense of self, meaning, and purpose when faced with life’s challenges. We think of this form of resilience as acting like an invisible set of sails that helps maintain balance during both calm and stormy periods.
The evidence makes it clear that spiritual therapy approaches matter greatly to people. They access dimensions of human experience that conventional therapy alone might miss, and yet when integrated properly within a helping profession provides more structure than spiritual practise alone. And it is crucial to remember that effectively integrating spiritual dimensions into therapy doesn’t require therapists to share clients’ beliefs, but rather to recognise and honour how these beliefs contribute to psychological health and recovery. That recognition alone can be profoundly healing.
Understanding the Distinction: Religion and Spirituality Aren’t the Same Thing
Here’s something that often gets muddled in therapeutic conversations: people frequently use “religion” and “spirituality” as if they mean the same thing. They don’t. Understanding their distinct characteristics proves essential for meaningful therapeutic work, and frankly, for creating truly holistic mental healthcare.
What Actually Separates Religion from Spirituality?
Religion typically refers to an organised system of beliefs, rituals, practises, and community. Think formal organisations with specifically defined and widely accepted beliefs, practises, and traditions, often including institutional contexts. It’s the external framework, if you will.
Spirituality takes a different path entirely. It can be understood as a kind of search for the sacred or the divine that may even sit outside of all that organised context found in a religion. It’s much more a personal quest centring on an individual’s connection with something much bigger.
The distinction becomes clearer when you consider that spirituality tends to be internally focused whilst religion commonly has external expressions through community. Perhaps most importantly, one can be religious but not spiritual, spiritual but not religious, neither, or both.
Practical Spiritual Therapy Approaches
Spiritual therapy encompasses various techniques that honour a client’s unique spiritual path without imposing specific religious doctrines. Practical approaches include exploring metaphysical experiences and their connection to divinity, incorporating spiritual practises and frameworks into the therapeutic process which includes creating safe spaces for exploring spiritual experiences.
Effective spiritual therapy recognises that individuals define spiritual health and wellness differently. Subsequently, therapists must respect each client’s inner world and work collaboratively to unravel layers of conditioning that may block healing.
This approach isn’t about telling clients what to believe but creating a respectful space where they can explore their process whilst honouring the role of faith, however defined, as a source of resilience and meaning. The goal is understanding, not conversion!!!
Making Spirituality Part of Your Therapeutic Work
So how do you actually bring spirituality into the therapy room? It’s not as daunting as it might seem, though it does require intentional strategies and tools.
Providing information about religious and spiritual beliefs should become a routine part of the initial assessment, but it often isn’t asked about when you first sit down with a therapist. Simple approaches work best so try sharing your sources of strength and how impactful that is rather than diving straight into your various religious beliefs.
Working alongside religious leaders can significantly enhance therapeutic outcomes, and this is especially helpful if your therapist isn’t able to integrate your religious side into your therapy. This isn’t about not going to therapy, it’s about recognising that healing can happen through multiple channels.
Numerous approaches used by great therapists can easily be incorporated directly into treatment without it being too weird for your therapist. You can ask about the suitability of meditation, hypnotherapy and Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) for you. Integrating spirituality is simply about creating space for you to explore meaningful dimensions of your whole experience that traditional therapy might otherwise miss.
The Missing Piece of Your Healing Journey
What strikes us most about this exploration is how glaringly obvious the problem becomes once you see it. Here we have a dimension of human experience that’s clearly important to the vast majority of people, yet it remains largely absent from therapy rooms. Whilst it’s true that therapists may have entirely valid reasons for leaving the conversation off the table, it’s rather like having a toolkit and deliberately ignoring one of the most useful tools.
What we’ve discussed here today makes it clear that spirituality isn’t just a nice-to-have extra in mental health care, it’s a fundamental aspect of how many people make sense of their world and cope with life’s challenges. For those who consider faith or spirituality central to their identity, spiritually-adapted approaches consistently yield better outcomes. That seems like something worth paying attention to, doesn’t it?
We believe the responsibility for change lies with both sides of the therapeutic relationship. Therapists need to examine their own biases (whether positive or negative), seek proper training, and develop the skills to navigate these conversations ethically.
But clients have a role to play too. If spirituality matters to you, don’t assume your therapist will bring it up. Ask about their competencies in this area when you’re choosing a therapist. Bring up your spiritual concerns in sessions. Your beliefs, whatever form they take, deserve recognition as potential sources of strength rather than something to be sidestepped or pathologised.
The reality is that effective therapy should address the whole person. Mind, emotions, body, and yes, spirit. When we ignore one of these dimensions, we’re not providing the most comprehensive care possible. That missing piece in your mental health journey might just be the acknowledgement of spirituality’s role in human flourishing.
The gap between what clients want and what therapists provide doesn’t have to remain this wide. But closing it requires honest conversations, better training, and a willingness to explore dimensions of human experience that have been overlooked for far too long.
References
Credit where credit is due, we aim to cite our sources because we value truthful content. 8 sources were referenced during research to write this, but you are encouraged to follow our other links as well.
- https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/Religion.aspx
- https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/40379-positive-vibrations-chakras-and-star-signs-what-sp
- Vieten, Cassandra & Scammell, Shelley & Pierce, Alan & Pilato, Ron & Ammondson, Ingrid & Pargament, Kenneth & Lukoff, David. (2016). Competencies for Psychologists in the Domains of Religion and Spirituality. Spirituality in Clinical Practice. 3. 92-114. 10.1037/scp0000078.
- Eleonora Papaleontiou – Louca, Effects of Religion and Faith on Mental Health, New Ideas in Psychology, Volume 60, 2021,100833, ISSN 0732-118X
- Vieten, Cassandra & Lukoff, David. (2021). Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Psychology. American Psychologist. 77. 26-38. 10.1037/amp0000821.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James
- Pearce MJ, Pargament KI, Wong S, Hinkel H, Salcone S, Morgan G, Kemp D, Brock B, Kim E, Oxhandler HK, Vieten C, Fox J, Polson EC, Currier JM. Enhancing training in spiritual and religious competencies in mental health graduate education: Evaluation of an integrated curricular approach. PLoS One. 2024 Sep 23;19(9):e0306114. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306114. PMID: 39312528; PMCID: PMC11419373.
- Howard AH, Roberts M, Mitchell T, Wilke NG. The Relationship Between Spirituality and Resilience and Well-being: a Study of 529 Care Leavers from 11 Nations. Advers Resil Sci. 2023;4(2):177-190. doi: 10.1007/s42844-023-00088-y. Epub 2023 Feb 11. PMID: 36816809; PMCID: PMC9918825.
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