Recent large scale surveys of religions in Taiwan showed over 80% of the surveyed subjects identified themselves with religious beliefs and practices, 85% of the subjects agreed religion can help people find inner peace and happiness, and ease the pains and discomforts. The 2014 American Pew Research Center’s Religious and Public Life Program reported Taiwan ranked second on the Global Religious Diversity Index.These findings indicated Taiwan has a high variety of population in religion and is a multi-religious society.
Western counseling literatures showed that clients with religious/spiritual backgrounds brought problems into the counseling embedding their religious/spiritual perspectives and copings towards their problems. Counselors need to inquire and understand how these clients viewed their problems religiously/spiritually so that counselors may integrate religious/spiritual interventions into counseling properly and effectively to serve clients in need. However, religiously/spiritually integrated counseling (abbreviated as r/s integrated counseling) in Taiwan is a new area and the related research is limited. The present article presents findings of reviewing the research in religiously/spiritually integrated counseling (abbreviated as r/s integrated counseling) in Taiwan in the past thirty years.
Our literature review identified few r/s integrated counseling empirical studies before 2010 in Taiwan. However, after 2010, on the literature of religion/spirituality counseling has increased, and various topics on studying religion and spirituality in counseling also expanded. In the present article, the authors presented seven themes: (1)The popularity and high diversity of the religious population in Taiwan; (2) Religious/spiritual studies in psychology/counseling psychology in Taiwan, which consists of two sub-themes: the research trend of religious/spiritual studies in psychology and counseling psychology professions in Taiwan, and the research evidences support the positive function of religion/spirituality to mental health and counseling; (3) Definitions of religion and spirituality, and r/s integrated counseling. The authors proposed the definition of r/s integrated counseling as counselors providing religiously/ spiritually integrated counseling services to clients in need, including the match of counselor’s and client’s religious background, and counselors exploring clients’ religious and spiritual issues and employing spiritual interventions.; (4) Research findings in r/s integrated counseling practices and outcomes. Three sub-themes were organized: positive attitudes of counselors and clients toward exploring religious/spiritual issues and employing religious/spiritual interventions in counseling especially for clients with strong religious/spiritual backgrounds, various religious/spiritual interventions were employed in counseling and positive outcomes were identified by counselors and clients, and counselors’ religious backgrounds and spiritual orientations influenced their personal lives and counseling works; (5)Research on r/s integrated counselor training and supervision. Three sub-themes were presented: r/s integrated counseling competencies, r/s integrated counselor training courses and outcomes, and r/s integrated counselor supervision issues and models; (6) Ethical principles of practicing r/s integrated counseling identified by counselors and clients; (7) Future directions were proposed by the authors, including promoting r/s integrated counseling through professional organizations and educational institutions, employing diversified research methodologies, integrating religion and spirituality into counseling courses and counselor continuing education classes, applying r/s integrated counseling to clients with religious and spiritual needs, , generating culturally inclusive and indigenous r/s integrated counseling theories and models, building a platform to facilitate dialogues among diverse r/s oriented and indigenous counseling professionals, and developing ethical guidelines for practicing r/s integrated counseling. The authors call attention to Taiwanese counselors/ educators/supervisors to be sensitive to the issues of religion and spirituality that clients may bring into counseling. There is a need for Taiwanese counseling profession to promote and develop the new specialty so that clients with religious/spiritual needs or issues may be better served in the future.
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