Spiritual understandings of psychosis: the perspectives of spiritual care staff

Pathologizing spiritual beliefs has been an ongoing challenge in mental health services. Spiritual care services have been working alongside clinicians in discerning psychosis-like experiences that present with a spiritual or religious content. This study aimed to explore how spiritual care staff make sense of experiences otherwise termed as “psychosis” by interviewing a multi-faith sample of six participants using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Participants acknowledged “psychosis” as a label applied to certain experiences that are spiritual in nature, emphasizing holisticism. Mental health services were described as predominantly biomedical and that spiritual care integration requires conceptual, collaborative, and practical considerations.