| Abstract: |
The global burden of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress has reached unprecedented levels, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting more than 970 million people living with mental disorder worldwide in 2024. While pharmacotherapy and conventional psychotherapy remain the dominant therapeutic frameworks, growing empirical evidence supports the integration of spiritual counseling as a complementary, low-cost, and culturally resonant intervention for mental-health and wellbeing outcomes. This paper examines the effect of spiritual counseling on anxiety, depression, and psychological wellbeing through a critical evaluation of recent global and Indian datasets up to 2025. The objectives are to assess the magnitude of effect of spiritual counseling on key mental-health indicators and to evaluate its integration potential within mainstream mental-health service delivery. Adopting a descriptive secondary research design, the study synthesises authoritative datasets and meta-analyses from the WHO, American Psychological Association (APA), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and peer-reviewed journals indexed in PubMed and PsycINFO. Findings reveal that spiritual counseling is associated with a pooled mean reduction in anxiety scores of 32–46%, depression scores of 28–41%, and a 24–38% improvement in psychological-wellbeing indices, with effect sizes (Cohen's d) ranging from 0.52 to 0.81. Indian studies show even larger effect sizes (d = 0.66 to 0.94) when culturally rooted modalities such as yoga-philosophy counseling, mindfulness-based spiritual care, and bhakti-informed counseling are used. The discussion underscores the need for ethically structured, evidence-based, and patient-centred spiritual care, integrated through trained counselors, hospital chaplaincy, and community-mental-health services. |
