Espiritualidade na clínica psicológica: um olhar sobre a formação acadêmica no Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

An extensive historical/paradigmatic review about spirituality covered different psychological branches and brought us to the current scientific studies which demonstrate positive and meaningful correlation between spirituality and mental health. This fact clearly evidences the necessity of training psychologists to deal with this human dimension. This

research, which consists of two studies, aims at investigating how spirituality has been approached in the training of psychologists and in their professional practice. Initially, the

indexes of spirituality of 1064 psychology students were investigated, in different universities in Rio Grande do Sul. A biosocialdemographic questionnaire, the Spiritual Well-Being Scale and the Spirituality, Religiousness and Personal Beliefs Sub-scale SRPB-WHOQOL-100 were applied. The results revealed spirituality indexes significantly lower in the senior

students than in the freshmen in the psychology courses under scrutiny (t=3,769; p<0,0001). The senior students also affi