Why your mental health practice needs a Spiritual Assessment
YOUR CLIENTS WANT TO TALK ABOUT SPIRITUALITY!
Your clients want to have discussions about their spiritual beliefs, experiences, and practices
Your clients ask you how they can use prayer and other spiritual practices in their therapy
Your clients ask you whether mindfulness, yoga, self-compassion, and forgiveness could help them
Your clients raise spiritual problems that are affecting their well-being and recovery
Through SCA courses, you will gain the knowledge PLUS the evidence-based skills to...
To have evidence-informed and ethically-sensitive conversations with clients about their spirituality
To make appropriate recommendations and referrals for clients who want to integrate spiritual practices into their treatments
To harnass clients’ religious and spiritual strengths
To build a stronger therapeutic alliance based on showing respect toward clients’ deeply held beliefs and values
I was a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School and also on the faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, UCLA, and Harvard for the past 40 years. I have been a licensed psychologist including working at the San Francisco Veterans Medical Center for 14 years, and also at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute for 9 years. I have authored over 80 articles on spirituality and mental health in peer reviewed journals including several on spiritual competency.
My initiation into spirituality both personally and professionally began with a spiritual crisis in my early twenties that provided me with both a mental health challenge (during which I benefited greatly from 5 years of Jungian psychotherapy) and a spiritual awakening that led me from being an atheist to becoming a spiritual seeker.
This episode later led me to become a psychologist with a deep interest in spirituality. For 20 years my focus was on spiritual crises like my own. This culminated in proposing and co-authoring a new category for “Religious or Spiritual Problem” in the DSM-IV (also in the DSM-5) which has increased awareness of spiritual issues in clinical practice. For the past 20 years, my focus has been on other ways to enhance the spiritual competency of mental healthcare providers.
“An excellent job of guiding people through the mental health resources.”
“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. ”
“Good presentation, great selection of material and organization. This was a much more valuable use of my time than virtually all of the CEU courses I have to sit through.”
“This was a GREAT course. It has helped me to be a more informed clinician.”
“This is one of the most valuable continuing ed courses I have taken. Practical, relevant and imminently usable. Thanks.”
Access the entire course for free, and pay only for CE credits
Welcome to the Course Video and Learning Objectives
Meet Your Instructors
Course Outline
Downloadable PDF of SSOPP Spiritual Assessment Interview
Pretest Self-evaluation of Spiritual Competency
Learning Outcome
History of Religion and Spirituality in Healthcare Video
Learning Outcome
What is Spiritually-Sensitive Assessment? Video
Dr. Puchalski Discussing Spiritual Assessment by Physicians Using the FICA
Example of Culturally Inappropriate and a Culturally Competent Healthcare
Example of Cultural Sensitivity Regarding a Patient's Religious Beliefs
Example of a Cultural Sensitivity Issue Around Gender
Learning Outcome
Overview of the SSOPP Interview Video
Learning Outcome
SSOPP Interview Screening for Importance of R/S Video
SSOPP: Screening for Importance of R/S Questions
Screening Interactive Exercises
Learning Outcome
SSOPP Interview R/S Strengths Video
Learning Outcome
Participation in Organized R/S Video
Organized R/S Interactive Exercises
Learning Outcome
Personal R/S Video
Personal R/S Questions
Personal R/S Interactive Exercises MISSING
Learning Outcome
R/S Problems Video
Questions for R/S Problems
R/S Problems Interactive Exercises
Learning Outcome
SSOPP Practice: Client Responses Quiz
SSOPP Practice: Interview Questions Interactive Exercises
Client Cases Involving R/S
Quiz Guidelines
Information on Continuing Education Credit for Healthcare Professionals
Required Course Evaluation for CE Credits
Post test Self-Evaluation of Spiritual Competency
Quiz for CE Credit
The Training and Tools you Need to Conduct an Evidence‑Based, Ethically Sensitive and Strengths‑Based Approached Assessment