Exploring religious meaning making in psychological therapy.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding how service users make sense of their mental health experiences in relation to their religious faith, and how this was explored in their individual psychological therapy.
IRAS ID
280057
Contact name
John Cape
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Z6364106/2020/04/87, UCL Data Protection Registration
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 28 days
Research summary
People make sense of their day-to-day experiences in order to understand their place in the world, and move toward a rich and fulfilled life. When challenges occur on this journey, such as the experience of mental health difficulties, the individual is faced with the task of re-evaluating, re-structuring, and re-interpreting their experiences in order to construct a narrative that makes sense to them in the context of their experiences. In individuals with strong religious beliefs, these meaning-making processes are linked intrinsically to a worldview that includes a transcendental being, and this being’s role in the unfolding of both pleasurable and difficult events in one’s life. This research project aims to understand how people who hold strongly religious beliefs make sense of their experiences of mental ill-health through the use of semi-structured interviews. Previous research in the field of religion and mental health has focused largely on correlating mental health outcomes with religiosity, or on exploring clinicians’ beliefs about the inclusion of religion in psychotherapy. This study aims to fill a gap in the literature by speaking directly to service users from Secondary Care Psychological Therapies Services in East London, in order to understand the meaning-making processes that link religion with experiences of metal health difficulties, and how these topics were explored in their individual psychotherapy. It is hoped that results from this study will inform clinical practice by providing novel insight into the meaning-making processes of highly religious service users in mental health services in the National Health Service.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1
REC reference
20/ES/0069
Date of REC Opinion
30 Jul 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion