Achieving Religious and Spiritual Competencies in Counseling: A Trainee-Driven Approach
Principal Investigator
Dr. Nathaniel G. Wade
Iowa State University
Abstract
Because religion and spirituality are personally important to many people, it is not surprising that many clients would like religion and/or spirituality (R/S) to be included in their counseling experience. Unfortunately, most counselors do not have adequate training to work explicitly with R/S in counseling. Despite decades of documentation of this need to help mental health professionals integrate religion and spirituality into their clinical work, little has been done to address this systematically and effectively. There is a need for more effective models that can help counselors achieve competency in this area and to do so at scale. In addition, there is a gap in the assessment of these R/S competencies, with known methods of assessment limited by counselor self-report. For our project, we seek to develop a novel approach to develop R/S competencies in trainees so they can effectively integrate R/S into their counseling when appropriate. This approach will be framed on the Multicultural Orientation, which emphasizes the development of cultural humility among counselors, encourages counselors to take opportunities to engage culturally relevant conversations, and helps clinicians develop greater cultural comfort. We will focus this approach on R/S as we develop training materials that can be used in formal educational training programs by trainers and supervisors and in trainee-directed skill development facilitated by peer groups. In addition, we will develop an objective assessment of R/S competencies that will compliment standard self-report measures. The assessment will be behavior-based with trainees providing responses to pre-recorded vignettes of clients discussing counseling issues with R/S relevance. Those video-recorded responses of the trainees will then be scored by raters for important R/S competencies (such as appropriate assessment or intervention) to assess attainment of these important clinical skills. These two objectives will provide important tools for the development and assessment of competencies that many clients say they desire in their counselors and that are needed to ethically and effectively address R/S in counseling.
Project Team
Dr. Nathaniel G. Wade, P.I.
Dr. Don Davis, Co-Investigator
Dr. Joshua Hook, Co-Investigator
Jamian Coleman, MS, Co-Investigator
Consultants
Dr. Jesse Owen
Dr. Melissa Zeligman
