Then, when the therapist is praying for the patient, they are changing their mental state of mind as well. This is significant, because it shows that when prayer is used during the process of obtaining mental health treatment, the patient would be more open to new ideas. At the same time, the therapist is more concerned about their patient's well being. Over the course of time, this improves the quality of treatment that is being provided; by helping the patient to be in the most resourceful state of mind and it is allowing the therapist to have more compassion. These two elements are necessary ingredients, in allowing the patient be able to help themselves, while having the trained mental health professional serving as a counselor / friend.
Application
For a trained mental health professional, this article will provide a good foundation as to how prayer can be used, as a part of their practice. For example, a Christian mental health professional could use prayer to effectively change the emotional intensity in sessions such as: spousal infidelity. Where, prayer could be used to help to reduce the negative emotions that both parties will feel. This is important, because when you are meeting with couples that are having marital problems, a defensive attitude is often taken in regards to individual behavior. Where, both parties will know that they are wrong to a certain extent, yet are reluctant to admit this to save face. When you pray before the counseling session, you are changing the focus away from blaming...
There are other insights, also described above, that I have gleaned form reading this particular article, which is why I chose it. Though I have my own opinions about prayer within counseling, I do believe that everyone is entitled to handle his or her sessions as they would like. However, I was quite surprised at the 82% statistic, as I had often believed that those who underwent counseling would be
Weld and Eriksen's "Christian client's preferences regarding prayer as a counseling intervention." This article was based on empirical evidence gathered about the preferences of Christians seeking mental health counseling regarding the utilization of prayer. That evidence was based on a pair of survey instruments, The Brief Therapist Survey and The Prayer Survey for clients. One of the most interesting aspects of this study is that it considered the preferences
Christian counseling has become an important treatment modality for a growing number of health care practitioners and patients across the country in recent years. Introduced during the early 1980s, Christian counseling advocates integrating religious practices and beliefs founded on religious traditions with psychotherapeutic techniques to provide an optimal approach to helping people cope with a wide range of personal problems and family issues. The purpose of this study is to
Counseling and Prayer Christian Prayer in Counseling "Christian Clients' Preferences Regarding Prayer as a Counseling Intervention" is a quantitative study by Weld and Eriksen (2007) in the Journal of Psychology and Theology. Their study used a survey of counselors and their Christian clientele with a Pearson and Fisher approach to quantifying the data. The implications of the analysis are used to discuss the counselor-patient relationship in terms of prayer, expectations, secularity, race,
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now