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Guest editors’ introduction to the Special Symposium Edition on Spirituality
British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
Abstract
Greg Nolan and William West reflect on the contemporary impact of rapid global social change on individual and collective cultural contexts of mental health, faith and spiritual sense-making. These issues remain of great importance as Western Europe, Turkey, Greece, Jordan and other countries experience the challenge of what is seen as mass migration of people from Syria, North Africa and elsewhere. The conflicts that give rise to this migration is very often framed and expressed in religious terms which then often leads to a culture of suspicion between faith groups in many countries globally. We link these thoughts with brief synopses of contributors’ research findings and perspectives in this Symposium Edition on Spirituality.
This paper reports findings from a study that investigated how counsellors who identified as practising members of a world religion or faith experienced undertaking counsellor training in the UK. This was a qualitative study. All four participants were final year students on BACP accredited counsellor training programmes and identified as practising Christians. Data was collated via semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Findings point to trainees experiencing significant anxiety with regard to talking about their faith during training for fear of eliciting negative judgments. As a result, participants either avoided talking about their religion or sought to defend it against negative perceptions. Participants tended to feel more comfortable talking to supervisors or therapists rather than their peers about religion when it was relevant to the client work or to personal issues. All participants reported receiving limited teaching input around religion and mental health on their programmes and felt this was a neglected area in counsellor training.
Culture as a positive resource in therapy (Doctorate in Counselling thesis)
- G Macdonald
MacDonald, G. (2015). Culture as a positive resource in therapy (Doctorate in Counselling thesis). University of Manchester,
UK.
Counselling as a social process
- J Mcleod
McLeod, J. (2001). Counselling as a social process. In P. Milner & S. Palmer (Eds.), The BACP counselling reader (Vol. 2., pp.
589-598). London: Sage.