Incorporating a Spiritual History into a Psychiatric Assessment

Abstract

Objective: To explore the importance of incorporating spiritual history into a psychiatric assessment and to develop and test a format for taking a spiritual history. Methods: An overview of training and practice issues involved in taking a spiritual history is dealt with, and then the formal requirements developed, which include questioning style, content and form of the spiritual history, the evaluation of values and precautions to be considered. Finally its integration into clinical practice is considered. Results: There are training exercises the clinician can do before taking a spiritual history. Clinicians must develop a trusting therapeutic relationship with the patient and approach the topic of spirituality with sensitivity. For a spiritual history to be useful an evaluation of the patient's value structure and possible expectation system needs to be undertaken and then available resources need to be identified. Conclusions: A spiritual history needs to be incorporated into a psychiatric assessment. Clinicians should be trained to explore the patient's spirituality with sensitivity and skill so that the information obtained can be integrated into the greater psychiatric assessment and management of the patient, thus fulfilling the much required whole person assessment and therapy in the biomedical model.