Improving psychotherapists' spiritual and religious competencies: Evaluation of a live videoconferencing training program.

Abstract

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a live videoconferencing training program in spiritually integrated psychotherapy offered by ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care and Education (ACPE). We used a quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest group design to investigate whether participants' religious/spiritual competencies (self-efficacy, attitudes, and skills) improved and whether their use of spiritual interventions increased after completing the training program. We also assessed whether their perceptions of the barriers to practicing spiritually integrated treatment in their practice setting changed after training. The research participants were 84 adult men and women from diverse spiritual backgrounds, mental health specialties, and geographic locations who completed the measures before and after the training program. A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance and follow-up t-tests revealed that the participants' spiritual competency and usage of spiritual interventions during treatment sessions significantly increased after the training program. Most Cohen's d effect sizes were large or moderately large, indicating that the improvements were educationally and clinically meaningful. The study provides preliminary evidence that ACPE's live, videoconferencing spiritually integrated psychotherapy training program enhanced the spiritual competencies of the participating mental health and pastoral professionals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).