Sub-Project 1: Fostering the Integration of Spiritual Competency Training into Mental Health Graduate Education

University of Maryland, Baltimore

Investigators

Michelle Pearce (Sub-Project PI)

Joe Currier

Ken Pargament

Purpose

This sub-project will yield an integrated curriculum approach to integrating R/S competency training into graduate courses. The course components are designed to facilitate the acquisition of basic attitudes, knowledge, and skills competencies in addressing R/S dimensions of clients’ lives. In turn, graduate programs across mental health professions will have a readily accessible resource for introducing or strengthening coverage of R/S competencies in their coursework in creative and flexible ways.

Background

  • Lack of coursework in R/S in mental health graduate programs is a critical barrier to religiously and spiritually competent care

  • Without standardized training, students may perpetrate bias against R/S, not appreciate cultural and clinical relevance of R/S, and feel inadequate to address clients’ R/S

  • Cultural transformation in medical school training (90% incorporate training in R/S) provides hope for similar transformation in mental health graduate training

  • Planning grant demonstrated the viability and efficacy of an 8-module online training program with mental health professionals (“Spiritual Competency Training in Mental Health”; SCT-MH; Pearce et al., 2019; 2020)

  • Integrated hybrid curriculum approach within required clinical courses has broad applicability across mental health training programs (vs. a stand-alone course)

Plan

We have a four-phase plan for achieving the micro-level aims of this sub-project:

  1. Enhance the SCT-MH program as standardized content (online and face-to-face) that can be incorporated into existing graduate-level courses with broad applicability across mental health professions

  2. Implement the enhanced version of the SCT-MH program with 20 instructors at 20 institutions from counseling, marriage and family therapy, psychology, and social work programs to receive training in R/S competencies and incorporate the SCT-MH program in a required clinical course

  3. Evaluate the efficacy, feasibility, and acceptability of the enhanced SCT-MH program with a large sample of graduate students via quantitative/qualitative assessments

  4. Disseminate the enhanced SCT-MH program and all face-to-face teaching materials to other mental health graduate training programs interested in strengthening coursework in R/S 

Anticipated Outcomes

Sub-Project 1 will change the landscape of mental health care practice in the U.S.—greater number of religiously and spiritually competent practitioners, educators, supervisors, and researchers—via strengthening resources for R/S competency training in graduate coursework. To do this, we will: 

  • Develop an integrated curriculum approach for teaching R/S competencies in graduate courses across counseling, marriage and family therapy, psychology, and social work

  • Refine the empirically supported SCT-MH online program for widespread dissemination

  • Offer freely available standardized course materials in R/S competency training (including face-to-face teaching guide, syllabus, grading rubrics, and online SCT-MH program access)

  • Offer freely available online training materials to equip faculty instructors to teach SCT-MH 

  • Promote the long-term interdisciplinary adoption of graduate training in R/S competencies

The RFP Submission Window is now closed