This course is based on a previously recorded workshop entitled: Spirituality, Identity, and Clinical Practice: Supporting Growth and Addressing Spiritual Harm.
This course examines spirituality as a complex psychological and social system rather than as inherently protective or harmful. Participants will explore how spiritual beliefs and practices interact with identity development across the life course, and how changes in belief, practice, or community can influence mental health, relationships, and functioning. Using a developmentally informed and trauma-informed lens, the training addresses both the supportive and challenging roles spirituality may play in clients’ lives. The focus is on building ethical, culturally responsive, and clinically effective skills for working with spirituality in social work and mental health practice. Participants who complete this course will be able to receive 3-hours of BBS approved continuing education units.
Learning Objectives:
1. Describe spirituality as a multidimensional system of meaning, attachment, identity, and coping, and explain how it may function as either a protective or stress-inducing factor in mental health.
2. Explain how identity develops and changes across the life course, and analyze how spiritual transitions and highly structured religious contexts may influence psychological adjustment.
3. Apply trauma-informed and developmentally informed clinical strategies to assess spirituality and support clients experiencing spiritual growth, conflict, or harm.