The Body, the Mind, and the Spirit: Including the Spiritual Domain in Mental Health Care

Abstract

This article supports the expansion of Engel’s (Science (AAAS) 196(4286):129–136, 1977) biopsychosocial model into a biopsychosocial-spiritual model, as Sulmasy (The Gerontologist 42(5):24–33, 2002) and others have suggested. It utilizes case studies to describe five areas of clinical work within mental health (religious grandiosity, depression and grief, demoralization and suicidality, moral injury, and opioid use disorder) with emerging evidence for the inclusion of the spiritual domain in addition to the biological, psychological, and social. For each clinical area, an underutilization of the spiritual domain is compared with a more developed and integrated use. An argument is made for continuing to develop, understand, and utilize a biopsychosocial-spiritual model in mental health.