Spiritual and religious competence in psychotherapy training

Responsiveness to clients' spirituality and/or religion (S/R) is a core dimension of multicultural and clinical competence. S/R might support or hinder clients' well-being and recovery from mental health conditions that might lead them to seek psychotherapy. Further, clients from across the spectrum of S/R diversity often want therapists to attend to their spiritual and/or religious identities in the treatment process. However, many counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, social workers, and other psychotherapy practitioners do not receive training in foundational knowledge, attitudes/dispositions, and skills related to S/R in graduate school or later in their professional careers to adhere to these pillars of evidence-based practice. Of the many solutions to overcoming these training gaps, therapists might need resources and tools to cultivate the necessary expertise to treat spiritually and religiously diverse clientele (including atheist, agnostic, or secular). Further, as such work proceeds, researchers will ideally clarify the most acceptable, feasible, and effective strategies for promoting S/R competence in different training settings. With this background in mind, this introduction to the Psychotherapy special section, titled "Spiritual and Religious Competence in Psychotherapy Training," describes the inspiration, rationale, and purposes of a collection of articles that present novel training methods, evaluation strategies, and pedagogical tools to develop spiritual and religious competence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).