Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy

This course provides participants with an introduction to spiritually integrated cognitive-behavioural therapy. At the conclusion of this course, through lectures, discussions, in-vivo exercises, and graded submissions, students will have learned how to assess and treat various mental health pathologies by eliciting and changing automatic thoughts and negative schemas using evidence-based CBT interventions such as case conceptualizations, structuring and psychoeducation, thought records, core belief records, Socratic questioning, behavioural experiments, depression and anxiety inventories, activity scheduling, fear ladders, and graded exposures. Unlike a purely secular CBT approach that leaves no room for clients spiritual beliefs, this course will emphasize how CBT can be enhanced when understood through the lens of contemporary spiritual care best practices. Participants in this course will first become acquainted with how to understand spirituality and religion through a CBT lens, then learn and practice how to enhance the effectiveness of CBT by integrating a working knowledge of spiritual care issues with established CBT interventions to treat anxiety, depression, grief and loss, panic disorder, social phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Special attention will also be paid to employing established CBT interventions to treat the significant rise and proliferation of viral pandemic-related anxiety and depression.