The Varieties of Religious Experience and the Retention of Clients in Taiwanese Faith-Based Residential Drug User Treatment

Abstract

This study investigated whether subgroups of faith-based treatment clients displaying similar religious experiences and treatment performance can be theoretically specified and empirically identified. Highlighting the volitional dimension of the change process, four subgroups (i.e., non-Christians, baseline Christians, rededicated Christians, and newly converted Christians) were proposed according to the direction and magnitude of clients’ change in religiosity during treatment. Data obtained for 707 subjects who entered a Christian residential therapeutic community program in Taiwan between 2000 and 2009 were analyzed. Results showed that the typology of religious experiences powerfully predicted treatment retention and completion. Issues of therapeutic specificity and relapse prevention are discussed and study's limitations are noted.

Keywords:

• Religiosity
• religious conversion
• faith-based treatment
• treatment retention
• Taiwan
• change process
• religious experience
• relapse prevention
• spiritual awakening

Notes

Each ideological model has its own criteria for success as well as failure as well as iatrogenic-related harms. Treatment is implemented in a range of environments; ambulatory as well as within institutions which can include controlled environments Treatment includes a spectrum of clinician-caregiver-patient relationships representing various forms of decision-making traditions/models; (1) the hierarchical model in which the clinician-treatment agent makes the decision(s) and the recipient is compliant and relatively passive, (2) shared decision-making which facilitates the collaboration between clinician and patient(s) in which both are active, and (3) the “informed model” in which the patient makes the decision(s). Editor's note.