Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 54(5), Oct 2023, 336-341; doi:10.1037/pro0000525
Spiritual Competency Training in Mental Health (SCT-MH) is an eight-module online training program with initial support for the effectiveness of promoting facets of foundational competence for addressing clients’ religion and/or spirituality (R/S) in mental health practice (Pearce et al., 2020). Focusing on 181 mental health professionals who completed SCT-MH for continuing education, the purpose of this brief report was to replicate and expand upon findings from Pearce et al.’s (2020) initial evaluation of the training program. Participants completed validated measures of basic attitudes, knowledge, and skills related to R/S competence at pre- and posttraining, along with intrinsic religiousness and prior training in R/S competence at baseline. In keeping with Pearce et al. (2020), the participants, on average, reported significant improvements across the areas of R/S competence assessed in this study. In addition, these outcomes were not moderated by participants’ personal backgrounds (gender, race, intrinsic religiousness) or prior professional training in R/S competence. Overall, these findings further support the effectiveness of SCT-MH for establishing foundational attitudes, knowledge, and skills among mental health professionals to attend to spiritual and/or religious dimensions of clients’ lives in routine clinical practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)