ABSTRACT
An initial spiritual assessment, using active listening skills, may point to the realm of the spiritual as a potential source of difficulties. When the problem is a matter of spiritual stress, rather than psychoses, then the clinician can begin to explore the sources of the dis-ease. The clinician looks for universal filters, significant spiritual changes, specific spiritual problems, and finally, the spiritual themes included in the Spiritual Spectrum. In 1995 the American Psychiatric Association developed a new category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for religious/spiritual problems. The purpose of this new diagnostic category was to allow clinicians to classify certain problems as uniquely spiritual or religious. In some cases clinicians may want to use spiritual inventories that have been created to help assess spiritual wellness. Many of the inventories focus on aspects of religiosity since religious practices are much easier to measure than subjective spirituality.
