TITLE: SPIRITUALLY INTEGRATED COGNITIVE PROCESSING THERAPY: A NEW

TREATMENT FOR POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER THAT TARGETS MORAL

INJURY

AUTHOR(S): MICHELLE PEARCE, PhD, KERRY HAYNES, DMin, BCC, NATALIA R

RIVERA, LCSW, CADCT, and HAROLD G. KOENIG, MD.

JOURNAL: GLOBAL ADVANCES IN HEALTH AND MEDICINE

YEAR: FEBRUARY 20, 2018

PAGES: 1-7

SEMESTER 2 2020/2021 (A202)

KSY3013 CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

GROUP A

NAME:

STUDENT ID:

LECTURER: PROF.

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 24.6.2021

 a) Content of Review

It is known that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating illness for

which the majority of individuals have unresolved symptoms despite present treatments.

Besides, moral injury (MI) is perhaps one of the stumbling blocks to PTSD rehabilitation,

particularly among active and retired military personnel. Considering the psychological and

spiritual dimensions of moral injury, an intervention that treats moral injury using both

spiritual and psychological resources may be very successful in treating PTSD. Despite

indications that spiritual beliefs and/or activities indicate better recovery from PTSD, there

are currently no scientifically supported individual treatments for PTSD and moral injury that

make specific use of a patient's spiritual resources. To fill this void, the researchers modified

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), an experimentally validated PTSD treatment, to

include clients' spiritual beliefs, routines, values, and motives. Thus, the treatment is known

as Spiritually Integrated Cognitive Processing Therapy (SICPT). This article proposes a novel

manualized therapy technique for addressing moral injury in spiritual/religious individuals

who have PTSD. Moreover, a quick overview of SICPT as well as a breakdown of the 12

sessions were also stated in the article. In conclusion, by focusing on moral injury, resolving

spiritual anguish, and utilizing a client's spiritual resources, SICPT may be an effective

strategy to alleviate PTSD and bring much-needed healing to individuals who are suffering,

especially those who fight for the country and preserve freedom (Pearce et. al., 2018).

This article was accepted for publication in the year of 2018 and was published by

SAGE Journals. SAGE Journals, is one the most reliable sources to find research papers and

journals because it publishes peer-reviewed, international scope, original and high-quality

research as well as interdisciplinary journal content in which it covers in depth about

humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine. Besides, the SAGE

Publications also has consistent journal indexing and is easily discovered. The journals are
easily discovered because they are indexed in the discovery services such as Summon

(ProQuest), Primo Central (Ex Libris), World Cat Discovery (OCLC) and EDS (EBSCO).

Moreover, numerous SAGE journals are added in discipline-specific databases and discovery

tools, for example, Scopus, PubMed, and others (SAGE Publishing, n.d.).

One of the authors is Michelle Pearce. She is a PhD holder, who currently works in

the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Center for Integrative Medicine,

University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Pearce is a registered

clinical psychologist in the state of Maryland. She studies the connection between

religion/spirituality, coping, and wellness, as well as how spirituality might be integrated into

psychotherapy. Also, she is a co-creator of Spiritual Competency Training in Mental Health,

a worldwide online training program for mental health clinicians (Pearce, 2021). Meanwhile,

Kerry Haynes, DMin, BCC, is the other author for the article, currently works as a mental

health chaplain at South Texas Veterans Health Care System, San Antonio, Texas, and Natalia

R Rivera (Natalia Rivera, n.d.) is a licensed clinical social worker who works at the US army.

Other than that, another well-known author who wrote the article is Harold G. Koening, MD.

He currently works at the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke University

Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina and his research mainly focused on the effects of

religions and spirituality on people’s healths (Department of Medicine Duke University of

Medicine, n.d.). Based on the background of the authors, I believe that the authors are

qualified to write this article. Moreover, the purpose of the material is to report research

findings as well as to share information to the readers about the integration of spirituality in a

new treatment which is Spiritually Integrated Cognitive Processing Therapy (SICPT) to treat

people with psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) especially

among current or former military service members.

 Furthermore, the article included the list of references that were like a scholarly article

provided as well as the in-text references in order to support the research. Also, there were

many references of current journals that range from 2011 until 2018 included in the article.

Other than that, the article has been cited several times by other article indexes in the SAGE

Publications databases which results in potentially being influential.

To verify the important data, the authors did include some sources from other articles

to support the new intervention in order to treat patients with PTSD more effectively, which

specifically integrates spirituality resources in the intervention. Moreover, the research also

included statistics from previous studies that also support effectiveness of the use of

treatments like Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) but spiritually integrated. Also, the

results from the article were carefully analysed by the authors in the form of case study to

ensure that the use of spiritually integrated cognitive processing therapy (SICPT) indeed can

be used to have a full recovery from PTSD especially those who are serving in or retired from

the army.

Based on my observation, the ideas of the article are well supported and the whole

article writing was well-organized. Besides, there was no mis-spelling in the article and the

grammar and vocabulary used in the article was quite good as the article can be easily

understood and all the ideas and purposes are well-conveyed.

b) Summary of findings and description of personal usefulness

In my opinion, there are indeed many ways in order to identify the credibility of an

article. The content of the article will be very much valuable for other author(s) or researchers

to cite any information from that article for their future studies. By selecting scholarly

articles from reliable sources such as journals, is very helpful as they provide in-depth articles

and reviews on a variety of topics, written by experts and researchers who use technical,
subject-specific vocabulary. On top of that, these papers are also being supported by tables or

figures and references. Other than that, the author(s) or researcher(s) should have

backgrounds that are related to their particular research and are also associated with an

unbiased respectable organization or a legitimate academic institution as well as have

published in peer-reviewed journals or books with references. Furthermore, the references

should be cited both in the text and in a reference list at the end of the paper, and a good

scholarly publication should also be containing recent relevant references. Moreover, the

article should include statistics or numerical data and cross-check with other data from

different sources as well. Lastly, every scholarly article should avoid having a lot of typos,

grammatical faults, or other inconsistencies that aren't trustworthy.

Personally, I feel that the evaluation process is very useful and beneficial for me

especially when I want to do my own research. This is because I will be able to discover the

most pertinent data to support my ideas as well as to guarantee that my research is of high

quality and trustworthiness. Moreover, the evaluation process also aids in eliminating any

information that is untrustworthy, prejudiced, inaccurate, and/or misleading from my

research. Despite the evaluation process will take some time and effort, I will be able to

proceed my research with greater confidence knowing that my sources are genuine.
REFERENCES

Pearce, M., Haynes, K., Rivera, N. R., & Koenig, H. G. (2018). Spiritually Integrated

Cognitive Processing Therapy: A New Treatment for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder That

Targets Moral Injury. Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 7, 1-7. DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1177/2164956118759939

Pearce, M. (2021). Dr. Michelle Pearce Committed To You Thriving-Body, Mind, And Spirit.

Dr. Michelle Pearce. https://www.drmichellepearce.com/

Natalia Rivera. (n.d.). Home [LinkedIn page]. LinkedIn. Retrieved June 23 2021, from

https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-rivera-81709b61/

Department of Medicine Duke University of Medicine. (n.d.). Harold G. Koening, MD.

https://medicine.duke.edu/faculty/harold-g-koenig-md

SAGE Publishing. (n.d.). SAGE Journals. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/sage-journals