Author(s)

Eunmi Lee^1,2, Klaus Baumann¹

¹Caritas Science and Christian Social Work, Faculty of Theology, Albert-Ludwig-University Freiburg, Germany.
²Center for Social Cohesion, Daegu Catholic University, Republic of Korea.

In patient-centred care, religious and spiritual needs and values of patients are increasingly underlined. The field of psychiatry and psychotherapy is no exception in this regard, so more attention and research are required. In addition to existing research, taking a further step, we would like to know whether there are any cultural differences in regard to staffs’ religious and spiritual values, and their attitudes to deal with religious or spiritual issues in clinical settings. For that reason, comparative studies were conducted in Germany and Korea. As a result, we found that German psychiatric staffs have more positive perspectives on religion and related aspects than Korean, not only in their personal lives but also in therapeutic settings. Furthermore, some contradictions regarding religiosity and spirituality were shown in staffs’ professional attitudes of both countries. Above all, in consideration of professional neutrality respondents are reluctant to handle such issues in therapeutic settings. For Korean psychiatric staffs, another important reason was that they are predominantly atheists or agonistics. German psychiatric staffs referred to have insufficient time. The kind of professionality which they are proclaiming to keep during the therapeutic processes is shown to be inadequate for several reasons. For genuinely wholistic care, more cross-cutural and in-depth studies are needed. Furthermore, professional self-contradictions deserve further attention and reflection, for the patients’ sake.

Psychiatric Staffs, Religious and Spiritual Values, Korea, Germany, Contradictions, Professional Neutrality

Lee, E. and Baumann, K. (2019) Religiosity and Spirituality: Is It an Appropriate Issue in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy? —Comparative Studies of Germany and South Korea. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 300-310. doi: 10.4236/jss.2019.73025.