Spiritus contra Spiritum: Including Spirituality in Addiction Treatments for Recovery, a Systematic Review

Spirituality had been acknowledged as a key construct to observe in the treatment and recovery from addictions. Due to the individualistic nature of the construct and overlap with religion, it is still not clear how spirituality influence treatment and recovery of individuals. Different treatments and approaches like AA philosophy or spiritual practices embrace the whole construct to obtain better outcomes in recovery for addictions. The aim of this review was to examine the effects of this construct and its relationship with recovery. A search strategy was followed to retrieve 457 scientific papers related with the matter of study. A total of 14 studies were selected and assessed for quality. Experimental and observational studies were categorised by design, and reviewed through narrative synthesis. Results showed that due to the lack of experimental research, poor quality and diverse conceptions of the construct, spiritual treatments are not more effective than other treatments whereas high levels of spirituality and spiritual practices tend to reduce the substance use outcomes and improve in other areas of recovery. From the findings reviewed which need to be considered with caution, it was concluded that implementing this construct within the therapy or approach may improve, in many cases, to achieve a successful recovery. More research is needed to determine if spiritual-related treatments have better outcomes, and some recommendations were addressed for future research, in addition to an encouragement for the inclusion of spirituality with its diversity into different domains of clinical practice.