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To maintain a balance of power and ensure ethical practice, therapists should provide clients with clear and transparent informed consent forms that outline the types of treatment they offer and their competency and expertise in delivering those forms of therapy. This transparency allows clients to make an informed decision about whether or not to pursue therapy and provide their consent. 

 

Therapists should implement evidence-based practices and adopt a spiritually informed perspective that aligns with a client's beliefs and values. While it may seem contradictory to combine a spiritually informed approach with evidence-based practice, it is essential to provide culturally sensitive care. According to the American Psychological Association, integrating the client's perspectives in evidence-based practice (EBP) of psychotherapy is crucial. To support this, they have developed a policy on EBP, which emphasizes the need for clinicians to incorporate the best available research with their clinical expertise while considering the client's culture, individual characteristics, and personal preferences (Cook 2017).

 

According to the APA, a standardized approach to psychotherapy is not effective as it doesn't cater to individual differences. Instead, clinicians must consider the patient's unique circumstances, including their cultural background, upbringing, and personal preferences, to provide the most effective treatment. In other words, clinicians must be willing to adapt their approach to psychotherapy based on the patient's specific needs and individual experiences.

Transpersonal therapy, narrative therapy, and Jungian archetypal therapy are examples of therapeutic frameworks that therapists can use to implement interventions and a spiritually informed philosophical approach. The term, spiritual is vague and amorphous, so there is a higher likelihood for interventions to go awry or for the therapist’s judgment to be clouded by their own beliefs or ego. Therefore, it is more ethical for the therapist and the client to co-create a treatment plan, and for the therapists to establish a brave, safer space for the client to share their own spiritual beliefs, and then work within their framework. This requires the therapist to suspend their own beliefs and focus on the client’s beliefs. Ideally, the client and the therapist’s spirituality align, and the therapist has extensive knowledge and training in skillfully using spiritual interventions…