spirituality

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September 11, 2013

Walsh’s Eight Major Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes for Mental Health

Posted by Nathen under exercise, food, fun, happiness, meditation, nature, relationships, relaxation, religion, Roger Walsh, spirituality, therapists, volunteering, well-being
1 Comment 

In 2011, Roger Walsh published a review of the research into ways we can improve our mental health and resiliency by changing how we live. He found eight that had both solid research behind them and strong effects. As therapeutic interventions go, these lifestyle changes tend to be enjoyable, inexpensive, and carry only positive side effects such as increased physical health, self-efficacy, and longevity. Despite that, mental health professionals do not emphasize lifestyle changes. This could be due to a spin on the instrument fallacy: Clients bring in a nail and all therapists can think of to use is their hammer. Walsh suggests this failing is because therapists have unhealthy lifestyles themselves.

  1. Exercise: 30 minutes or more of exercise has therapeutic and preventative emotional and cognitive effects.
  2. Nutrition & Diet: Fish, vegetables and fruit in the diet have both enhancing and protective psychological effects.
  3. Time in Nature offers cognitive and emotional benefits and stress relief.
  4. Good relationships: Being connected in rich relationships comes with cognitive benefits, happiness, and resiliency. In fact, the quality of a therapeutic relationship may account for a large part of the benefit of therapy.
  5. Recreation & Enjoyable Activities (AKA fun): Helps with stress, mood, and well-being.
  6. Relaxation & Stress Management: Mindfulness practices and muscle relaxation techniques can have strong and lasting positive effects on mood management.
  7. Religious & Spiritual Involvement is associated with good mental health, maybe especially with faiths centered on love and forgiveness.
  8. Contribution & Service: Giving time and energy to others boosts happiness, as long as it isn’t out of a sense of obligation.
 

April 7, 2010

Don’t Overlook Generational Cohort

Posted by Nathen under Froma Walsh, generations, psychology, reasoning, spirituality, statistics, stereotyping, Strauss & Howe
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I’m reading Froma Walsh’s Spiritual Resources in Family Therapy (1st edition) for my Wellness & Spirituality Throughout the Life Cycle class. Here’s a quote:

“Active congregational participation as well as prayer tend to become increasingly important over adulthood. Whereas only 35% of young adults aged 18-29 attend their place of worship weekly, 41% of persons aged 30-49, 46% of those  aged 50-64, and 56% of those over 65 attend weekly.”

That quote is from the 1999 edition of the book, and so those numbers are probably based on a survey conducted in the 1990s. The source is not cited, so I can’t be sure, so take this criticism with a grain of salt. I’m just using this example to point out something that happens a lot with the analysis of age-based research. That is, this presentation makes it sound as if humans attend church more and more as they get older, but these numbers say no such thing.

What these numbers say is that at the time of the survey, 35% of young adults say they are going to their place of worship weekly and that each age group above them at this time show more of that behavior. Each generation has its own characteristics. It may well be that this group of young adults is part of a less church-going generational cohort, which will stay more or less that way as they age. Imagine, for example, that such is the case and the next generation that comes along attends church more often. A survey at that time will show that place-of-worship attendance is relatively high in young adults, drops off in middle age, and then resurges in old age, and many will assume, based on that, that this is the “natural” progression of human church-going behavior.

As far as I know, Walsh is accurate in her analysis, based on information she is not giving. It’s a potential error to be aware of, though, and one often overlooked by researchers in psychology. I’ve noticed it often since reading Strauss & Howe’s Generations. They make the point really well, that we often think that increasing age causes people to become more or less something-or-other–more conservative, say–basing our reasoning on the generational cohorts that are currently alive, but it may just seem that way because of the quirks of our sample.

In order to know, we would need more information than this snapshot. We need multiple surveys conducted over quite a period of time, while different generational cohorts were alive, to get longitudinal information. Does each generation attend church more and more as it ages? Is the difference in church-going between a generation in its young years and that generation in old age greater or less than the difference between that generation and another generation entirely?

 

April 4, 2010

Four Meanings of the Word “Spiritual”

Posted by Nathen under arguments, faith, James Fowler, Ken Wilber, lists, meditation, personality, spirituality, words
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On Friday I had my first Wellness & Spirituality Throughout the Life Cycle class in my couples and family therapy program. We had an open discussion of the meaning of spirituality that got pretty tense. I admit that I was pretty confused about what was making things tense–I was not in the clearest of minds, as I’d just taken comps the day before. It did get me thinking about Ken Wilber’s essay in Integral Spirituality about the four meanings of the word spirituality. In it, he says that there are at least four very common ways that people mean that word, and that if the specific meaning is not made clear it can lead to confusing and confused arguments. Here’s my paraphrase of his four common meanings:

1) Any human intelligence, skill, or ability taken to the highest level. Think Einstein’s intellect, Carl Rogers’ empathizing. In Kosmic Consciousness, Wilber mentions Michael Jordan playing basketball as an example of this meaning of spiritual.

2) Spirituality as its own kind of human intelligence, as in James Fowler’s Stages of Faith. Wilber cites Fowler’s stages  as just one example: Humans have a capacity for faith that can progress throughout their lives, from an “undifferentiated faith” at infancy through stages like “mythic-literal faith” and eventually, possibly, to “universalizing faith” as his furthest potential.

3) Spirituality as a state of consciousness, as in meditative states or other meaningful altered states. Also peak experiences.

4) Spirituality as a facet of personality or personality type. People who are very compassionate or loving, for example, might be described as spiritual.