Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Clinical Practice: Guidelines for Psychotherapists and Mental Health Professionals

Cassandra Vieten, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist, president and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and a scientist in the Mind-Body Medicine Research Group at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute. Her research has focused on spirituality and health, development and pilot testing of mindfulness based approaches to cultivating emotional balance, and transformative experiences and practices. She is coauthor of Living Deeply (New Harbinger/Noetic Books 2008) and author of Mindful Motherhood (New Harbinger 2009). Shelley Scammell, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who has been in private practice in San Francisco, CA for the past fifteen years. She has taught at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Sonoma State University, and the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was associate professor at New York University for fifteen years. As copresident of the Institute for Spirituality and Psychology, she codeveloped the spiritual competencies, and has published and presented on them in APA journals and conferences. Her background and teaching in Western and Eastern (Vedic) studies and practices for the past thirty years-as well as her clinical experiences with clients struggling with these issues-has led her to explore these arenas in order to help fellow clinicians.