Spirituality and People With Mental Illness: Developing Spiritual Competency in Assessment and Intervention

Spirituality often plays a central role in helping people with mental illness cope and recover. Assessment provides a vehicle for understanding and utilizing clients' spiritual strengths, and, consequently, practitioners are increasingly asked to conduct a spiritual assessment. For example, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), a major healthcare accrediting agency, now recommends that a spiritual assessment be conducted. This article provides a framework for an initial spiritual assessment that complies with the recent JCAHO (2002) recommendations. Suggestions for spiritually competent practice are provided, including guidelines for discerning authentic spiritual experiences from manifestations of mental illness that reflect spiritual content. The article concludes by reviewing a number of spiritual interventions that may flow from a spiritual assessment.