Bridging religion and spirituality with gestalt psychotherapy to improve clinical symptoms: Preliminary findings using gestalt pastoral care

An inherent tension between religion and psychotherapy has inhibited the conversation between the two paradigms in determining the most effective approaches to improving mental health outcomes for people of faith. Preliminary research has suggested that the intersection between the two may prove fruitful in providing mental health interventions. As a part of a broader big-data study sponsored by the Bridges Consortium of Brigham Young University and underwritten by the John Templeton Foundation, the present study evaluated the effectiveness of the spiritually integrated strategies of the modality Gestalt Pastoral Care (GPC) focusing on two goals: (a) determining the overall clinical effectiveness of GPC, not previously scientifically validated, and (b) evaluating the effectiveness of GPC in the reduction of symptoms most commonly seen in clients using empirically validated clinical measures. Using a practice-based research design, 324 participants, engaging in individual session format and/or multiperson retreat format, were followed up to 1 year using measures including the Clinically Adaptive Multidimensional Outcome Survey (CAMOS), the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE-10), the Primary Care PTSD Screen for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM]-5(PC-Post-traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD]-5), and the Spiritual Index of Well-Being (SIWB). A series of paired t-tests compared differences from the first session (pretreatment) to last session (posttreatment) and showed significant improvements in all of the clinical outcomes. These data indicate a slightly stronger relationship between symptom reduction and delivery in the retreat setting.