Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry

22 Teaching Religious and Spiritual IssuesELIZABETH S. BOWMANSUMMARYUnited Kingdom, American, and World PsychiatricAssociation guidelines for education of psychiatryresidents recommend teaching religion-spirituality.Elsewhere, educational guidelines implicitlysubsume religion-spirituality under cultural competencerecommendations. American ethical guidelinesrequire knowledge of religion-spirituality forpsychiatrists and psychologists. In the United Statesand Canada, approximately 25 percent of psychiatryresidencies teach religion-spirituality. Trainingof North American psychologists lags but has risento about 15 percent of programs. Virtually no informationis available about religion- spirituality educationof African, Australian, or Middle Easternpsychiatrists or psychologists. I review psychiatryand psychology education availability in eightAfrican and eleven Middle Eastern countries.Interest in religion-spirituality in Australia is risingbut lags behind that of North America. Religionspiritualityis taught to medical students in 101American and Canadian medical schools, butinformation is unavailable on medical student educationin religion-spirituality elsewhere. I discusseducation grants, an English religion-spiritualitycurriculum for psychiatry and psychology residents,other teaching resources, teaching methods,faculty qualifications, and recommended contentprioritized into essential, important, and helpfulcategories. This chapter also addresses resistanceto curricular integration of religion-spirituality.Religion-spirituality education of psychiatrists andpsychologists is low, but rising, and would be morecommon if educational and ethical guidelines werefollowed.This is a book for clinicians. This chapteris about teaching religious-spiritual a issuesto psychiatric and psychological trainees.Did it take the wrong exit on the editorialfreeway and end up in this book instead ofan educational one? Clinician colleague,before you decide to skip this chapter, considerthis: Why did you decide to read thisbook? Was it because your clinical trainingdidn’t teach you enough about religionspirituality?If teaching about religion-spiritualityin clinical mental health care wasinadequate in your training, do you wantthe future generations of your colleaguesand their patients to suffer the same fate?1. RATIONALE FOR TEACHINGRELIGION-SPIRITUALITY1.1. Scope of Issue and Rationale forTeachingReligion and spirituality are nearly ubiquitous inhuman life, and mental illness afflicts approximately500 million people worldwide. (1) Nocountry lacks religion or mental illness. Thus, theeducation of mental health professionals mustaddress treatment of illnesses in people of allreligions. But why teach it to psychiatric, psychological,and other trainees? I propose three reasons:for our field, for our patients, and for ourcolleagues in training.aFor ease of expression, this chapter refers to religion andspirituality with one hyphenated term. This implies inclusionof both, but not equivalence. This chapter conceptualizes religionas institutional or organized and spirituality as a connectionto the transcendent or sacred.332