Spiritual Crisis: empirical assessments of peer-support and grounding in integration

This portfolio in professional practice consists of five elements.

The first is a literature review that aimed to answer the question, what is the empirical evidence-base for interventions in spiritual crisis/emergency? The second element is a small-scale research project that used an online questionnaire survey and Thematic Analysis, to evaluate the work of the UK Spiritual Crisis Network (SCN). The third is an applied research project. This used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore the meaning and lived experience of “grounding”, one of the main interventions often discussed in the context of spiritual crisis.

The fourth element was a report on professional practice that took the form of a single-case case study. This used Narrative Analysis to explore applied practice in the form of peer-support by someone who had their own lived experience of spiritual crisis.

Finally, a reflective account aimed to summarise the previous studies and explain how they relate to theory and contribute to practice. In addition to the conclusions of each study summarised below, two overarching conclusions emerged from the project. These were the importance of peer-support for people attempting to integrate a spiritual crisis, and the potential clinical value of adopting a constructionist approach to spiritual crisis.