The Spiritual Developmental Process for People in Recovery from Severe Mental Illness

Abstract

This article gives insights about the various ways that people with severe mental illnesses experience spiritual benefits and struggles in the context of their life journeys, and how these are navigated through time as part of a spiritual development process. Multiple in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 individuals with a range of diagnoses and spiritual affiliations receiving services at community mental health centers and consumer-run organizations in a Midwestern state. The study identified four patterns in the way people with severe mental illnesses utilized spirituality as part of their lives and recovery through time, which were named “basic impact” on recovery; “symptoms as a barrier” to using spirituality in recovery; learning to use spirituality for recovery “in progress”; and “high synergy” between spirituality and recovery. Implications for social workers and related mental health practitioners are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• spirituality
• recovery
• severe mental illness
• spiritual development

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work is based on the first author’s doctoral dissertation titled “Severe mental illness and the recovery process: Understanding the role of spirituality” (Unpublished; University of Kansas, 2011).