Religious Values, Religious Concerns

-Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Living Reminder For a deeply religious person, seeking help from a secular mental health professional may feel like a contradiction of faith-or at least a very risky thing to do. Therefore, the interviewer needs to be particularly sensitive to behaviors suggesting a challenge to religious authority. Mental health issues and problems are obviously very connected to religious concerns. Finding a comfortable middle ground that denies neither perspective can be challenging. As Samuel M. Natale says in the article Psychotherapy and the Religiously Committed Patient: Multicultural and Diversity Issues 389There are few problems more demanding in psychotherapy than dealing with a client’s religious beliefs. This is so for a number of reasons, which include not only a lack of sensitivity and understanding on the part of the therapist but also a hesitation, avoidance, and even downright fear on the part of the therapist to explore distinctly religious values with a client.

In keeping with the trend to look at the whole picture when working with individuals, families, or couples, religion and/or spirituality can often be integrated into the counseling process . However, although this may be true with regard to more liberal thinking religious clients, fundamentalists and deeply committed people from most organized religions generally prefer not to seek secular help for their problems . Therefore, similar in some ways to working with Asian American families, the ?rst visit may be because of a family or personal crisis. Their entry into the professional mental health world generally is not a casual inquiry into the potential use of psychotherapy to expand and grow. More likely, it is an expression of desperation.