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Introduction to Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy

Course Number: GC230

Subject: Global Citizenship

Background Materials

Handbooks and Encyclopedias

Handbooks and subject-specific encyclopedias are comprehensive reference works that contain foundational to information, instructions, or practical guidance on a specific topic. You can search Omni for these by including "handbook" or "encyclopedia" as a title word in your search. Here is a link to such a search:

Spiritual Care or Psychotherapy 

Videos

ChatGPT (OpenAI)

While using ChatGPT or Copilot (both based on OpenAI data) for academic research can be helpful in getting a general overview, explaining complex concepts in simpler terms, or generating keywords or search terms for databases, there are several important reasons why you should avoid relying on it as a primary or sole source for academic research.

  1. Limited language model
    • ChatGPT queries a large language model made up of public, freely available data (web pages, Wikipedia, etc.), and does not include much academic or peer-reviewed content.
  2. Lack of source transparency
    • ChatGPT doesn’t cite sources unless explicitly asked, and even then, it can generate fake or inaccurate citations. This makes it unsuitable for producing verifiable, citable academic content.
  3. Potential for inaccuracy
    • While ChatGPT is generally reliable, it can produce confident-sounding but incorrect or misleading information, especially in niche or rapidly evolving fields.
  4. Lack of critical analysis
    • ChatGPT summarizes well but does not engage in deep, critical thinking or original analysis, which is essential for high-quality academic work.
Peer reviewed journals

In Omni you can limit your search to "Peer-reviewed journals." "Refereed" and "peer reviewed" are synonyms. Peer reviewed journals contain various types of articles, some of which in not peer-reviewed. 

Original research

Humer, E., Unterrainer, H.-F., Büttner, J. T., & Probst, T. (2025). Religious spiritual well-being across psychotherapeutic orientations: a comparative study among Austrian psychotherapists. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/19349637.2025.2487281

Review article

Austin, P. D., Lee, W., Keall, R., & Lovell, M. R. (2025). Efficacy of spiritual interventions in palliative care: An umbrella review of systematic reviews. Palliative Medicine, 39(1), 70–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/02692163241287650

Clinical case study / Clinical trial

Weisman de Mamani, A., Lopez, D., McLaughlin, M. M., Ahmad, S. S., & Altamirano, O. (2023). A Pilot Study to Assess the Feasibility and Efficacy of a Transdiagnostic, Religiously/Spiritually-Integrated, Culturally Informed Therapy. Spirituality in Clinical Practice (Washington, D.C.), 10(3), 233–244. https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000308

Perspective, opinion, and commentary

Haußmann, A. (2025). Spiritual Care in Caring Communities.  Spiritual Care. Zeitschrift Für Spiritualität in Den Gesundheitsberufen, 14(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1515/spircare-2025-0033

Book review

Carter, J. (2024). Introduction to Spirituality: Cultivating a Lifestyle of Faithfulness. Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, 17(2), 455–457. https://doi.org/10.1177/19397909241277287
Evaluating sources

Open access journals

  • Open Access is free online availability and usage right of research articles
  • Open Access publishing typically involves the author paying an article processing charge (APC)
  • APC's can be built into grant applications
  • See the Library's Scholarly Communication page for more information

Predatory Journals

Predatory journals are a global threat. They accept articles for publication — along with authors’ fees — without performing promised quality checks for issues such as plagiarism or ethical approval. (Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., & Ardern, C. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786), 210+)

How do I know if a journal is reputable?

Academic Journals in Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy

There are several hundred academic and scholarly journals that deal with topics related to spiritual care and psychotherapy. The majority of these journals are indexed and searchable in databases such as Omni or PsycInfo. Sometimes it can be helpful to "hand-search" the contents of a journal, to get a feel for timely topics, or even to search the full text contents (indexes like Omni or PsycInfo only contain the metadata about the contents).

Here is a selective list of relevant titles:

Database searching tips
  1. Consider word variations and synonyms (a great use of ChatGPT)
    • think about how others might refer to your ideas
    • e.g, child death, perinatal death, neonatal death, stillbirth, sudden infant death, etc.
Search Tactics

What is the tactic?

What does the tactic do?

Examples

Phrase searching

Use “quotation marks” to find more than one term in a row.

“brain cancer”

Truncation

Use an asterisk* at the end of a term to include multiple endings. (sometimes $)

trauma*

trauma, traumatic, traumatically, traumatize, traumatized, traumatizing

Boolean AND

Use AND to ensure that all terms appear in every search result.

depression AND home care

Boolean OR

Use OR to ensure that at least one term appears in every search result.

senior OR geriatric OR "old person"

Proximity (not available in Omni)

Use NEAR/n to search for terms within n words of each other (sometimes Nn)

"spiritual care" NEAR/5 palliative

Tutorial: Better searching using AND, OR, NOT 

  1. Employ search limiters (available limiters depend on the database)
    • peer reviewed, article type, date
    • e.g, in APA PsycInfo, can include: age group, population group, methodology
  2. Identify key publications and authors
    • note citations, and cited references, repeated author names
  3. Document and track everything you do in the steps above

Example:

Finding articles

Tutorial: Finding scholarly articles on a topic

  • start with Omni
    • limit to "Articles" and "Peer-reviewed journals"
      • while you will likely find what you need for this class, article content in Omni is not chosen or curated, but dumped in, i.e., it may not have everything on a particular topic.
Follow citation trail in Omni
  • Up arrows find sources citing this item
  • Down arrows find sources cited in this item

Omni citation trail options

Researchers rely on curated collections of content, i.e., subject-specific databases.

APA PsycInfo®

A comprehensive database for the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines.

More Info

Finding Books

Tutorial: Finding books in Omni

  • start with Omni
    • limit to "Books and eBooks" 

Requesting items from another Omni library is prety straightforward, but remember you can request any item even if it is not in Omni. 

Dissertations and Theses

Dissertations and theses provide an insight into the research processes and sources used by PhD and Masters students. For example, in the following dissertation, see page 11.

Casey, S. (2023). Spiritual care visits during palliative care predicting discharge location (Order No. 30245377). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

APA Style

While the Library owns print copies of the entire APA Style guide, you should get enough information from the following two APA pages:

Page Owner: Greg Sennema

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