At your initial intake, in addition to asking about your child or teen’s presenting problems, family history, academic history, developmental history, medical history, and history of treatment, we will also ask a few basic screening questions:

• Does your family belong to a specific religious faith tradition?
• Do you actively attend church or other services?
• Do you feel that there are any parts of your faith tradition or spiritual practices that can be used to help your child or teen address their presenting problem?
• Do you feel that there are any parts of your faith tradition or spiritual practices contributing to your child or teen’s presenting problem?
• Do you want to explicitly include your family’s spirituality in your child or teen’s treatment?

If these issues are not relevant to your child or teen’s treatment, we’ll note this. Then, in collaboration with you, we’ll proceed with treatment without discussing spirituality further. Many families come to us specifically to receive “secular” evidence-based psychotherapy for their children or teenagers. We love doing this. You never have to discuss spirituality in psychotherapy. Nor will we ever impose our religious or spiritual beliefs or values on you.

As a parent, if you decide that you want to include spirituality in your child and family’s treatment, we will also make note of this. We will then provide feedback as to how your family’s spirituality could be a resource during psychotherapy. In collaboration with you, and at your request, we’ll incorporate spiritual resources into your child or teen’s treatment plan. In practice, we integrate spirituality into treatment by using “secular” evidence-based practice as a “base” to incorporate spiritual interventions and resources.