Международный журнал неотложной психической помощи и устойчивости человека

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Integrating Spirituality Dimension in Middle Eastern Countries Addiction Treatment Services: Regional and Cultural Perspectives

Ahmed Yousif Ali

Spirituality is now an established & essential dimension of holistic addiction treatment interventions. There has been a slow integration of this valuable resource into treatment and rehabilitationservices in Middle Eastern countries where the concept is underdeveloped with minimal uptake. A search of the academic libraries and databases was conducted to establish the extent of this “avoidance” & this was supplemented by a questionnaire distributed to selected focus groups, enquiring specifically about the topic.This article summarizes the findings of the search, analyses the causes, and recommends adopting culturally appropriate operational definitions of spirituality, conducting more research and integrating the dimension it into the addiction treatment philosophies utilized in these countries. Religion and spirituality in many cultural groups are deemed important for the provision of comfort, joy, pleasure, and meaning to life as well as be means to deal with death, suffering, pain, injustice, tragedy, andstressful experiences in the life of an individual or family .

(Pargament, 1997).