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Our Mission

The Spiritual Competency Academy offers mental health professionals a selection of unique courses that provide you with the skills and knowledge to become more spiritually competent. Our foundational curriculum starts with a course on how to conduct an evidence-based and spiritually sensitive spiritual assessment. Other courses cover a wide variety of topics including self-compassion, mindfulness and forgiveness.



As a spiritually competent mental health professional, you can:
Build a Stronger Therapeutic Alliance with Your Patients

This alliance is based on showing respect toward your clients’ deeply held beliefs and values. This quality is all the more important in light of the pandemic.

Improve Your Practice

SCA's courses allow you new insights and techniques when working with the realm of spirituality and religion in your therapy practice.

Grow Your Client Base

Expertise in spiritual competency is a key to more successful outcomes that can lead to more referrals.

Conduct Spiritual Assessments with Your Clients

These groundbreaking ethically-sensitive spiritual assessments will address clients' spiritual strengths, beliefs, and problems.

Discuss Contemporary and Alternative Treatment Outcomes

You will be able to have evidence-based and ethically-sensitive conversations with clients about how mindfulness, forgiveness and compassion practices could improve their recovery and treatment outcomes.

Share Your Knowledge

Share mindfulness, forgiveness and compassion practices with clients through the use of free online resources including guided practices by leading mental health experts.

Understand Your Clients More Deeply

Harness your clients’ religious and spiritual strengths.

Earn CE Credits

SCA is approved by the American Psychological Association, California Board of Registered Nursing and other boards.

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Meet the Founders

David Lukoff, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and  co-author of the DSM IV and DSM 5 diagnostic category Religious or Spiritual Problem which increased awareness of  spiritual issues in clinical practice. He has published over 80 articles on spirituality and mental health, many in peer reviewed journals such as Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine,  Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Psychiatric Annals,  Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Spirituality in Clinical Practice. He is a Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California and has served on the faculty at Harvard University and UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Cassandra Vieten, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist, mind-body medicine researcher, author, consultant, and public speaker. She is Executive Director of the John W. Brick Foundation, Associate Research Scientist at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019. Her research has focused on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and completed her research training in behavioral genetics at UC San Francisco. She has authored three books, published numerous articles in scientific journals, and is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop leader.


Read An Article by Dr. Lukoff & Dr. Vieten

Testimonials

"The information and guidance in Dr. Lukoff's courses will soon be, if not already, mandatory for all health care professionals who choose to remain current and literate in their fields."

-Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D. , Former Professor of Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School

"An excellent job of guiding people through the mental health resources."

-John Suler, Ph.D , Department of Psychology, Rider University Webmaster: Psychology of Cyberspace

"I am so excited to know that I am not the only one seeing the importance of this concept and how it would help to broaden the area of wellness and emphasis on the mind, body, and spirit/psyche/soul."

"This course has helped me to see the progression of the relationship between spiritual and religion. The section on the history of religion and spirituality was fascinating."

"The information presented here will help me demonstrate to my interdisciplinary colleagues that spirituality is foundational to human care...or rather is the foundation of human/holistic care."


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SCA courses provide approved CE and CME credits for psychologists, physicians, social workers, counselors, nurses, chiropractors, occupational therapists, and coaches
through the following accreditation agencies:

✦American Psychological Association                             ✦California Board of Behavioral Sciences 

✦California Board of Registered Nursing                        ✦The California Board of Chiropractic Examiners

✦The California Board of Occupational Therapy           ✦The National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching


More info on accreditation