Inpatient Perspectives on the Appropriateness of Spiritually Integrated Interventions in a Christian-Affiliated Program

Religion and spirituality (R/S) often play crucial roles in the lives of people seeking mental health care. However, patients' preferences for addressing R/S in their treatment, especially in inpatient settings, has not been understood. This study examined preferences for R/S integration and factors that predict inpatients' attitudes toward specific strategies that incorporate R/S in psychotherapy. The sample (N = 230; 59% female; 85% Caucasian; 72% Christian) was comprised of patients recruited from inpatient psychiatric units at a large behavioral health center with a Christian affiliation in the Midwestern region of the U.S. A cross-sectional analysis was used to examine associations among spiritual transcendence, religious and spiritual struggles, and attitudes toward varying spiritual interventions. In general, patients viewed the majority of spiritual interventions as mostly or completely appropriate. Further, patients generally preferred interventions that addressed the importance of patients' religious and spiritual beliefs, values, relationships, and resources in addressing therapeutic goals-more than interventions in which therapists explicitly incorporated religious scriptures, discussed their own beliefs or values, or incorporated explicit religious/ spiritual content in therapeutic exercises (e.g., meditation). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that inpatients' favorable attitudes toward spiritually integrated care were most strongly associated with deriving a sense of transcendence from spirituality, p < .001, experiencing moral struggles, p = .047, and self-identifying as Caucasian, p = .016. Overall, this work highlights these patients' interest in incorporating spiritual interventions in their mental health care and point to spiritual transcendence and moral struggles as predictors of preferences in this Christian-affiliated inpatient program.