Scoping Review of Spirituality-Integrated Psychotherapies for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

In this scoping review, we sought to determine the current quality of the evidence base for spirituality-integrated psychotherapies (SIPs) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared with existing evidence-based practices. Using a rigorous identification, screening, selection, and inclusion method, we extracted data from 33 articles to analyze trends within and across four categories of SIPs between 2002 and 2022 (building spiritual strengths and moral injury, spiritually integrated meditation and mind-body-spirit interventions, Islamic healing practices, other SIPs). Meditation and mind-body-spirit interventions such as transcendental meditation have high-quality randomized controlled trials demonstrating equivalent effect sizes and efficacy to existing evidence-based treatments for PTSD. Transcendental meditation specifically appears to have sufficient empirical support to be considered "evidence based." Interventions in the other categories currently lack sufficient research support to be designated as such. We contend that more high-quality randomized controlled trial designs with bona fide comparison conditions and between-group comparative baseline symptom evaluation are needed to support the efficacy of these approaches.