More people in the spiritual community around the world offer counseling and support to those suffering from mental illness than we can presently measure effectively. Yet these individuals collectively care for the soul in ways that the community relies on every day. When we think about where people go to access care when suffering from mental illness, we cannot overlook this group. Clinicians depend on sophisticated credentialing and training to provide their services. Although many in the spiritual community are also equipped to minister to their members, they often do not receive specialized training in counseling and even fewer have supervision available.
The inclusion of spiritual providers of care in training, collaboration, and referral with mental health providers provides challenges and opportunities for many communities. Sustained recovery-oriented systems of care can build on the unique resource of spiritual providers embedded in the community. In this section, we explore why people sometimes go to spiritual leaders for help, identify who the providers are, and discuss how to honor this point of access while adding quality to care. We will offer ideas about developing locally relevant training and present ways to collaborate and establish a network of referrals. Finally, we will offer resources to guide the process of ensuring quality for all providers sensitive to community psychiatry and religion. For more from this chapter of a text I contributed to in 2009 – please see the footnote to this article. It noted an insightful quote from C. G. Jung, to whom I am indebted and whose work shapes mine.
Carl Jung:
“Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. (They) would be better advised to put away (their) scholar's gown, bid farewell to (their) study, and wander with the human heart through the world. There, in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling halls, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, Socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in (their) own body, (they) would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give (them), and (they) will know how to doctor the sick with real knowledge of the human soul.(1)”
Pastoral Care Specialist Training: exploring real knowledge of the human soul.
Philippe Huguelet;Harold G. Koenig. Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry (Kindle Locations 4754-4758). Kindle Edition.
Dr. Marcus McKinney is an ACPE Psychotherapist and Licensed Professional Counselor at Day Kimball Healthcare in Putnam, CT. He can be reached at marcusmichaelmckinney@gmail.com.
More people in the spiritual community around the world offer counseling and support to those suffering from mental illness than we can presently measure effectively. Yet these individuals collectively care for the soul in ways that the community relies on every day. When we think about where people go to access care when suffering from mental illness, we cannot overlook this group. Clinicians depend on sophisticated credentialing and training to provide their services. Although many in the spiritual community are also equipped to minister to their members, they often do not receive specialized training in counseling and even fewer have supervision available.