Religion Has a Public Relations Problem: Integrating Evidence-Based Thinking Into Clinical Practice

Religion and religious institutions receive a great deal of negative, rather than positive, attention and press. This creates an impression, for the casual observer, that religion and associated institutions are a plight on the planet. It is critically important for evidence-based research and best practices in clinical services to be well known and utilized within professional psychotherapy practice. Clinicians must be mindful of the many advantages of religious engagement for physical, mental, and community health and wellness. Psychologists, and other mental health professionals, tend to be secular and nonreligious and receive little, if any, training on religious diversity that may contribute to a negative bias against all things religious. The bias may be detrimental to working with many of their clientele. This reflection addresses these issues and offers a call for a more thoughtful, balanced, and evidence-based approach of integrating religious engagement within clinical and counseling psychological practice.