“What Do You Mean by Spirituality? Please Draw Me a Picture!” Complementary Faith-Based Addiction Treatment in Switzerland From the Client's Perspective

Abstract

This article reviews: (1) the relative importance of spirituality and religion in Switzerland and the United States, (2) the rationale for faith-based addiction intervention programs and the drawbacks of measurement approaches, and (3) results from a pilot study exploring the meaning of spirituality and religiosity from the consumer's perspective. Twenty-three patients entering the Swiss Südhang clinic in-patient alcohol user treatment program during the first five months in 2012 participated upon their admission in a video-taped drawing task, designed to provide their personal visualized definitions of the terms “spirituality” and “religiosity.” Nine dimensions emerged pointing to a high complexity of the concepts.

Keywords: :

• spirituality
• religiosity
• faith-based intervention
• alcohol treatment
• visual sociology
• treatment systems

Notes

4 Founded in 1877 in Geneva originally as the Swiss Temperance Association by the Swiss theologian Louis Rochat. First foundation was closely linked with the Protestant awakening movement at the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century, spreading from England. The Blue Cross played a key role in the development of professional treatment of alcoholism (1890 first Blue Cross agency in Zurich) and is organized on the international level (Klingemann et al. 1992: 307).

5 The IOGT International (formerly known as the International Organization of Good Templars and International Order of Good Templars and the Independent Order of Good Templars) is an international nongovernmental organization working in the field of temperance. The IOGT „comprised the world's largest and most militant teetotal organization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For many years an English-speaking organization, the core of its membership is today in Sweden (Blocker et al. 2003: p. 268).

6 Initially based on work with families since 1986, this Christian-oriented therapeutic community was set up in 2005 by the Foundation El Rafa (from Hebrew: “God is healing”) to treat individuals with addiction and mental health problems in difficult life circumstances.

7 Exiting a deviant career, problematic behaviors and/or lifestyles, without professional-based, tradition-based or mutual-help based- change (e.g., AA, NA, GA, OA, etc.). The interested reader is referred to: H.K. Klingemann and L.C. Sobell (eds.) 2001, Natural Recovery Research Across Substance Use, Substance Use and Misuse 36:11; Shorkey, C.T. (2004). Spontaneous Recovery and Chemical Dependence: Indexed bibliography of articles Published in Professional Chemical Dependency Journals, University of Texas at Austin <http://128.83.80.200/tattc/spontaneousrecovery.html>. Editor's note.

8 (Stiftung für christliche Liebestätigkeit) The Foundation aims to promote the Church's charitable activity as well as new, pioneering, and charitable works of religious life and the diakonia (responsible service of the Gospel by deeds and by words performed by Christians in response to the needs of people,” is rooted in and modeled on Christ's service and teachings.)

9 The evaluation showed, that patients who used the spiritual modules were highly satisfied, a wish to extend the limited pilot program to all patients groups and that the therapeutic staff perceived positive effects of the spiritual program in their general therapeutic work. At the same time, staff members preferred to address their own spiritual needs outside of the clinic (Schläfli & Klingemann 2009: p. 4).

10 In Barthian visual semiotics, the key idea is the layering of meaning. The first layer is the layer of denotation, of “what, or who, is being depicted here?” The second layer is the layer of connotation, of “what ideas and values are expressed through what is represented, and through the way in which it is represented?” Barthes's model can be useful in examining how images construct meanings. In addition there is a sign, which is composed of a signifier –a sound, written word, or image –and the signified, which is the concept evoked by that word or image. The very fact that the sign is divided into a signifier and a signified allows us to see that a variety of images can convey many different meanings (van Leeuwen, 2001).

11 Brennan and Prediger (1981) suggest using free-marginal kappa when raters are not forced to assign a certain number of cases to each category.

12 The coding refers to the occurrence of each category (yes or no) and not to its prominence/“space” in the drawing.

13 Twelve respondents who –according to treatment files –had in fact participated in the spiritual program said they did not. Another indicator that the term “spirituality” used in the postal survey was not automatically connected with this experience but subject to ambiguity or specific personal definitions.