Recent research has identified a specific Framework of Spirituality that describes the psychological organization of spirituality within human experience. This world’s most comprehensive science-based explanation of spirituality has been applied in treatment of adult mental, behavioral and addiction disorders with profound implications for child and adolescent development and the impact of bullying. Research with psychedelics has demonstrated a proposed neuroscience foundation making it a powerful model for application. Validation of this expanded Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Self-Transcendent Experience (CBT-STE) promotes a spiritual/mystical awakening without psychedelics in a short-term intervention. Operationalized experiences of self-worth and dignity are key to opening a spiritual core with signs of mystical experience in this study of men with long-term addiction, trauma with mental health problems, and years of incarceration (USA study). Psychological assessments of the intervention demonstrated spiritual/mystical characteristics, significantly enhanced well-being, “healing” characteristics, and effects useful as a transdiagnostic, transpersonal therapy. Language of the intervention is non-sectarian, non-religious and universally suitable for international religious and secular settings. This begins a new field of “Applied Spirituality.”                   

 

John Calvin Chatlos is certified in adult, child and adolescent and addiction psychiatry. His post-medical training was completed at New York University and Columbia University in NYC. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. His clinical work with addictions includes exploration of spiritual experience with a practical applied focus especially for post-traumatic growth from which injury to faith is critical. He has written about the “Framework of Spirituality” implications on religious, philosophical and spiritual understanding, adolescent development, psychoanalytic theory, and bullying and oppression impact. His theory proposes a practical expansion to a biopsychosocial-spiritual model for medicine and psychiatry and begins a new field of  “Applied Spirituality.”