Spirituality in Mental Health and Psychotherapy

Abstract
Spirituality is highly common in the general population, and among those seeking mental health treatments. Further, spirituality can play both a positive and negative role in mental health. Yet, for a variety of historical reasons, the majority of clinicians receive scant training in this area and ignore this domain in the delivery of care. This presentation will review results from a collection of scientific studies conducted at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School with acute psychiatric patients, and provide direction to clinicians in how to address spirituality among diverse patients.

Learning Objectives

Attendees will learn…

1. About current science pertaining to spirituality and mental health
2. About clinical research on integration of spirituality into psychotherapy
3. How to address spirituality in the provision of evidence-based mental health care

Biosketch
David H. Rosmarin, PhD, ABPP, is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the McLean Hospital Spirituality & Mental Health Program. He innovates methods for integrating spirituality into evidence-based mental health treatments and he is a widely-cited researcher in this area who has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Rosmarin’s work has been featured in Scientific American, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, and he is the author of a trade non-fiction book Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You (Release date: October 17^th, 2023, by HarperCollins). He can be reached via https://spirit.mclean.harvard.edu