Although social work practitioners are increasingly likely to administer spiritual assessments with Native American clients, few qualitative assessment instruments have been validated with this population. This mixed-method study validates a complementary set of spiritual assessment instruments. Drawing on the social validity literature, a sample…

Mental health practitioners are increasingly called on to administer spiritual assessments with Native American clients, in spite of limited training on the topic. To help practitioners better understand the strengths and limitations of various assessment instruments from a Native perspective, this study used a sample of recognized experts in…

At the turn of the century, the Joint Commission--the nation's largest health care accrediting organization--began requiring spiritual assessments in hospitals and many other mental health settings frequented by Native Americans. Despite high levels of service use, culturally unique forms of spirituality, and a history of oppression in mainstream…

Developing competency in diversity and assessment are key educational priorities. With Native American clients a spiritual assessment is typically required because spirituality is often instrumental to health and wellness in Native cultures. In keeping with the movement toward competency-based education, this qualitative study sought to answer the…

At best, mainstream mental health services are often ineffective with Native American clients, and, at worst, they are a vehicle for Western colonization. As such, the authors explore the notion of abandoning the Western therapeutic project and rebuilding the helping process on the basis of indigenous knowledge foundations. To this end, they…

This study represents an initial step at giving social work practitioners an important assessment tool as they seek to provide culturally competent services to Native American clients. For the current study, a spiritual lifemap assessment tool was modified by the authors for a Native American cultural context. To determine the relevancy and…