Is spirituality essential for recovery?

 

If spirituality supports resiliency, then it’s definitely part of our business…

 

Get ready to squirm in your seats because we need to have a talk with you about spirituality. Spirituality is a topic we behavioral health types have shied away from: Professionals are taught to avoid it in their practices, and organizations have concerns about the separation of church and state. Many of the people w

ho use our services, however, tell us that some form of spirituality plays a key role in their recovery process. So, since we’re all trying to create opportunities for people to recover, we’d better get over ourselves and figure out how to talk to people about this.

We’ve asked Rev. Laura Mancuso, a psychiatric rehabilitation counselor and interfaith minister, to help us discover ways of including spirituality in program planning and initiate conversations with people that will help them develop spiritual competence.

Laura worked in the public mental health field at the local, state, and national levels for 15 years before her own journey of health challenges and personal losses culminated in a calling to become ordained. As an interfaith minister, she strives to honor all faith traditions, as well as the beliefs and life philosophies of those who do not adhere to any religion.

Laura observes that “spirituality is highly personal, very central to a person’s inner life, and oftentimes inseparable from one’s cultural identity. It seems to me that if mental health programs can figure out how to respect and support the spirituality of the people we serve and the people we employ, we will have figured out how to respect and support their very essence as human beings. That’s why spirituality should be included in programs that intend to be holistic, culturally competent, and recovery-oriented.” Read More…