The Role of Spirituality in Health & Healing

Anyone studying to become a mental health practitioner learns the term ‘biopsychosocial’.It’s a mouthful but captures the essence of understanding the dimensions of the challenges affecting an individual’s life. Clinicians are given the task of understanding what organic issues are at play for a new client. Are there biological issues at work affecting the person’s functioning? And how does this variable connect to their psychological functioning? An individual having gone through a surgery might well have challenges like anxiety or depression. These psychological challenges describe the second factor at play. And of course these two issues of biological and psychological are also affected by the individual’s social circumstances. Do they have social and family support? So stitched together the biopsychosocial is a pathway to understand and assess the critical health variables at play. Now to further complicate the matter therapists are also called to be sensitive to an additional factor at play for many people. And this is the spiritual reality for the person. This variable is often relevant for patients who’s spiritual life is an important factor in their lifestyle and ability to heal. But what is this notion in reality? Their spiritual value is a core part of their own sense of meaning. My way of understanding this is centers on the meaning of the term spirit. One way to think about spirit is to think of it as energy. Spirit can be understood as a person’s energy. Stated another way, spirit is what animates a person. Human beings are animated creatures. And one way to think about this variable is that when a person’s animation or spirit is deflated, you might be thinking about the clinical term depression. Every therapist knows that when they’re listening to someone who describes a loss of energy and animation that they are likely facing someone struggling with depression. When seeing it this way it brings to life, or animates if you will, the whole phrase: bio, psycho, social, spiritual. We are treating the total person from the most basic form of the organism biologically, how they are coping, psychologically, and what resources do they have socially. All these factors taken together make the person. This is the work of healing and therapy