Spirituality in Clinical Practice © 2016 American Psychological Association

2016, Vol. 3, No. 3, 153–154 2326-4500/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/scp0000116

Ethics and Spiritually Sensitive Psychiatric Practice:

Introduction and Overview

Len Sperry John R. Peteet

Florida Atlantic University Harvard Medical School

This special section focuses on the unique ethical challenges in psychiatric practice,
particularly when those challenges involve religious and spiritual beliefs, practices, or
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

concerns. This article provides both an introduction and context for this special section
as well as an overview of the articles that follow.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Keywords: spirituality, religion, ethics, consultation liaison psychiatry, disaster

Special sections of this journal are meant to
provide more extensive coverage of important is-
sues facing spiritually sensitive practice, as well as
to offer a forum for expanding such coverage
beyond the disciplines of psychology and spiritu-
ally oriented psychotherapy. In the past few years,
ethical concerns has become increasingly chal-
lenging in spiritually sensitive practice. Accord-
ingly, a previous special section of this journal
(Volume 3, Number 1) was devoted to “Ethical
Standards on Spiritual Awareness in Psychother-
apy.” It focused on ethical concerns in psychol-
ogy, particularly those involving spiritually
sensitive psychotherapy. Because ethical consid-
erations are likewise challenging in the spiritually
sensitive practice of psychiatry, this special sec-
tion is devoted to those specific challenges in
several psychiatric specialties.
Ethical Challenges in Spiritually Sensitive
Psychiatric Practice: Context
Psychiatry shares with religion and spiritual-
ity an interest in human flourishing, a concern
Editor’s Note. This is an introduction to the special sec-
tion “Ethics and Spiritually Sensitive Psychiatric Practice.”
Please see the Table of Contents here: http://psycnet.apa
.org/journals/scp/3/3/.—LM and LS
Len Sperry, Mental Health Counseling Program, Florida
Atlantic University; John R. Peteet, Department of Psychi-
atry, Harvard Medical School.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Len Sperry, Mental Health Counseling Program,
Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton,
FL 33431. E-mail: lsperry@fau.edu
153
with beliefs and values, and an appreciation for
community. Yet historical tensions between sci-
ence and religion have often reinforced disci-
plinary boundaries and obstructed dialogue,
leaving clinicians uncertain about how to ap-
proach ethical questions arising between them.
When are scrupulous religious practices disor-
dered? What distinguishes healthy from un-
healthy religion? How should a therapist ap-
proach a patient’s existential, moral, or spiritual
distress? What should clinicians do with pa-
tients’ R/S convictions when they are central to
acceptance of medical care, recovery from ad-
diction, or response to disasters? What are the
R/S aspects of ethical dilemmas in forensic,
child, and community psychiatry, and in psy-
chiatric research and teaching?
The diverse set of papers in this special sec-
tion, presented in symposia at either the 2016
Conference on Medicine and Religion in Hous-
ton or the 2016 American Psychiatric Associa-
tion Annual Meeting in Atlanta, are a sampling
of chapters from a forthcoming book to be pub-
lished by Oxford University Press (Peteet, Dell,
& Fung, in press). They are featured here to
broaden the perspective of readers on the mul-
tifaceted interface between mental health and
religion and spirituality, and to stimulate
thoughtful reflection and conversation about its
important ethical dimension across multiple
professional disciplines.
Ethical Challenges in Spiritually Sensitive
Psychiatric Practice: Overview of Articles
In “Ethical Considerations Regarding Reli-
gion/Spirituality in Consultation Psychiatry,”
 154 SPERRY AND PETEET
Herschkopf and Peteet (2016) describe how
consultation-liaison psychiatrists evaluate pa-
tients with varying degrees of medical and men-
tal illness, and the ethical issues that arise when
values, often religious and spiritual beliefs, are
in conflict, including the psychiatric consul-
tants’ own values. Using case material, they
address several such ethical considerations.
In “Addressing Unhealthy and Potentially
Harmful Expressions of Religiousness and Spir-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
ituality in Clinical Practice,” Magyar-Russell
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
and Griffith (2016) discuss the reluctance of
mental health professionals to label the reli-
gious and spiritual lives of their clients as “un-
healthy” or “harmful.” They propose an ethical
framework for assessing and addressing reli-
gion and spirituality that respects expressions of
religiousness and spirituality while accurately
labeling maladaptive thoughts and behaviors so
that effective intervention can be implemented.
In “Religious Professionals, Ethical Dilem-
mas and Mental Illness” Kehoe (2016) de-
scribes the importance of both religious profes-
sionals and mental health professionals in the
lives of those with religious and spiritual con-
cerns. She notes that both groups of profession-
als often deal with similar ethical dilemmas.
She focuses on those that religious profession-
als face and how a relationship with a mental
health professional can help in resolving those
dilemmas.
In “Assessing Spiritually Sensitive Clinical
Practice: Some Evaluation Guidelines,” Sperry
(2016) notes that although the ethics codes for
the mental health professions expect providers
to take a spiritual history, these codes do require
that unless they have specialized training, all
providers are expected to directly address spir-
itual concerns. He distinguishes basic spiritual
care and specialized spiritual care and specifies
the functions of basic spiritual care. He then
identifies common professional and organiza-
tional ethical considerations associated with
providing this level of spiritual care, and spec-
ifies three evaluation guidelines for assessing
the adequacy of this level and illustrates them
with a clinical case.
Finally, in “Ethical Considerations for Men-
tal Health Providers Responding to Religious
and Spiritual Issues in Disasters and Emergen-
cies,” Thielman and Goss (2016) describe how
in disaster settings, social structures roles and
the rule of law become blurred and deteriorate.
In such settings, several ethical dilemmas arise
that can seem strange and unprecedented. He
focuses on a number of ethical issues faced by
disaster responders that frequently reflect the
religious or spiritual dimension.
References
Herschkopf, M. D., & Peteet, J. R. (2016). Ethical
considerations regarding religion/spirituality in
consultation psychiatry. Spirituality in Clinical
Practice, 3, 155–158. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/
scp0000113
Kehoe, N. C. (2016). Religious professionals, ethical
dilemmas, and mental illness. Spirituality in Clin-
ical Practice, 3, 163–166. http://dx.doi.org/10
.1037/scp0000115
Magyar-Russell, G. M., & Griffith, J. L. (2016).
Addressing unhealthy and potentially harmful ex-
pressions of religiousness and spirituality in clini-
cal practice. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 3,
159 –162. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/scp0000111
Peteet, J., Dell, M., & Fung, J. (Eds.). (in press).
Ethical considerations at the intersection of psy-
chiatry and religion. New York, NY: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Sperry, L. (2016). Assessing spiritually sensitive
clinical practice: Some evaluation guidelines. Spir-
ituality in Clinical Practice, 3, 167–170. http://dx
.doi.org/10.1037/scp0000112
Thielman, S. B., & Goss, G. (2016). Ethical consid-
erations for mental health providers responding to
religious and spiritual issues in disasters and emer-
gencies. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 3, 171–
174. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/scp0000114
Received July 28, 2016
Accepted July 28, 2016 䡲