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, along with the CE credits you need. 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. All courses can be taken for free or for CE credits.

    Various professional standards underscore the importance of providing effective services to all people, including those from diverse religious backgrounds. Yet despite these standards, studies have repeatedly found that most social workers receive little training in navigating this aspect of diversity during their graduate educations. To address this lack of training, these courses discuss a concept that is foundational for effective service provision with spiritual clients from diverse religious backgrounds: spiritual competence. 

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.

Spirituality 101
for Mental Health Professionals

  • Spiritual Competency: Introduction and Overview

    4 CE Credit Course


    Spirituality and religion are important components of multicultural competency equivalent in importance to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. This course summarizes the need to include religious and spiritual competencies in healthcare professional training. It also reviews the research conducted by the authors to establish a set of religious and spiritual competencies (attitudes, knowledge, and skills) that all healthcare professionals should be trained in and utilize with clients.

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  • An Evidence‑Based, Ethically-Sensitive and Strength‑Based Approach to Spiritual Assessment

    4 CE Credit Course


    This course trains you in the foundation of spiritual competency and how to conduct an a spiritual assessment with clients. This will enable you to elicit information for treatment planning and build a stronger therapeutic alliance.

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More Spiritual Practices
for Mental Health Professionals

  • Self-Compassion Practices for Mental Health Professionals

    4 CE Credit Course


    This 4-hour CE course reviews the contemporary theories and research on psychological approaches to self-compassion, the pioneers in this field, the instruments for measuring this important human capacity, how to use self-compassion interventions in clinical settings, online resources such as guided self-compassion meditations for therapeutic use.

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  • Forgiveness Practices for Mental Health Professionals

    5 CE Credits


    The theory and practices of forgiveness have been largely the province of the world’s religious and philosophical traditions. However starting in the mid 1980’s, forgiveness has found a new home within psychology, and research on forgiveness began in earnest. The health benefits have been well-documented and approaches to forgiveness have been developed that therapists can currently drawn on in their work. These courses focus on the religious background to approaches to forgiveness, contemporary research, and clinical applications.

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  • Mindfulness Practices For Mental Health Professionals

    10 CE Credit Course


    This 10-hour CE course provides you with the knowledge, skills, and scientific evidence-base required to have informed and ethically-sensitive conversations, make recommendations and referrals, and share mindfulness practices with clients. It covers the history of mindfulness practices in therapy, its evolution from a religious practice to a mental health intervention, contraindications, and programs such as MBSR, ACT and DBT that have solid research support.

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    See More Courses →

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

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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