There are other insights, also described above, that I have gleaned form reading this particular article, which is why I chose it. Though I have my own opinions about prayer within counseling, I do believe that everyone is entitled to handle his or her sessions as they would like. However, I was quite surprised at the 82% statistic, as I had often believed that those who underwent counseling would be much more liberal and would thus be less inclined to believe in any religious component to therapy. Often times, those seeking religious therapy would see a priest rather than a psychologist or psychiatrist. Yet it was quite illuminating to see that, perhaps, even those more liberal did not necessarily shun prayer as a means to understanding themselves and their surrounding. Yet, again, there is no basis to this latter statement, though it can be a component that a further study could better address.
Application
This final section will discuss the potential application of this concept to an actual setting. Whereas in the first two sections the study was described and commented upon (especially in the second section), this latter section is much more practical. For this section, there is a hypothetical patient undergoing depressive tendencies who is also suicidal and who believes there is no hope in life. Depression is a very...
For this reason, a patient ought to know that depression is not his or her fault; in fact, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the individual, other than a normal, perhaps genetic predisposition that, unfortunately, may leave him or her vulnerable to depressive tendencies.
When talking to a patient who is undergoing such difficult transitions, especially such insurmountable sadness, one must be very careful with how to handle such a person. First, comfort must be imparted. Yet most importantly, a reason to help this patient understand that the situation is neither hopeless, nor terminal, and thus suicide is not at all a go-to solution. Prayer could have a great impact here for the simple fact that it can provide a means through which the patient could ask for answers, for penance, or for anything else that he or she might need. Prayer could also introduce the patient to hope, and to knowing that there is a possibility of something existing beyond death, something for which to strive and work for, and something that does not need to be attained easily and that can wait. In fact, prayer could have a huge impact to presenting hope, for that is what prayer is, and in a depressive patient, this could be effective, depending upon his or her openness to trying this means of therapy.
