Espiritualidad, jóvenes y bienestar

Espiritualidad, jóvenes y bienestar

Sesión enmarcada en el Reto ICS 2022-2023 "Jóvenes, relaciones y bienestar psicológico".

Título: "Espiritualidad, jóvenes y bienestar".

Ponente: Suzanne Hollman (Academic Dean at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Divine Mercy University).

ABSTRACT

The prevalence and course of Borderline Personality Disorder can typically be identified as soon as adolescence. In this presentation, implications of spiritually integrated interventions for BPD as applied to adolescents will be discussed. A current study that examined a sample of seventy adult patients with borderline personality disorder in treatment at McLean Hospital, who received a group intervention to incorporate spirituality into mental healthcare treatment will be discussed against the backdrop of future implications for spiritually integrated adolescent treatment of BPD. The SPIRIT intervention is a hospital-based intervention grounded in a CBT framework that explores how patient spirituality and spiritual struggles relate to current distress and symptoms. Often patients diagnosed with BPD have experienced trauma and have co-existing disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTD). We examined spiritual struggle, religiosity, spirituality, and treatment outcome for those 47 patients with BPD and no PTSD and those 23 patients with both BPD and PTSD. We found no significant differences between those patients with PTSD and those without. When examining suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, analysis revealed that there were significant differences regarding spirituality and spiritual struggle, with those BPD patients who attempted suicide endorsing less self-reported spirituality compared to those who did not. Those BPD patients who reported current suicidal ideation reported more spiritual struggles compared to those patients who did not. The level of patient spiritual distress also related to their experience that the intervention helped them identify a link between their spiritual distress and symptoms, but it did not relate to their perceived learning strategies to reduce the distress. Feedback from patients was very positive regarding the benefit of the group intervention. Limitations, research implications, and clinical implications will be discussed.  For the purposes of this discussion, implications for the treatment of BPD in adolescents will also be discussed, especially in light of the high risk behaviors adolescents with BPD engage in.