Exploring Religious Meaning-Making in Individual Psychotherapy

As humans, we must make sense of our experiences in order to find meaning and purpose in life, especially during times of difficulty. Religion can play a significant role in this process of meaning-making, and has been implicated in how people understand and cope with suffering. Part One of this thesis provides a theoretical overview of extant literature pertaining to meaning-making, religion, and mental health. Historically, research on these topics has correlated religiosity with psychotherapeutic outcomes, and explored therapists’ perspectives on the incorporation of religion in therapy. However, little work has been conducted with religious service users to understand how they make sense of their mental health difficulties, and the ways in which this was explored in their individual therapy. Part Two of this thesis presents an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study exploring five religious mental healthcare service users’ experiences of their faith, mental health difficulties, and psychotherapy. This thesis was produced alongside an Expert by Experience who provided input in all stages of research development, governance, data analysis, and write-up. The complexities and implications of coproduction for trainee research are explored in Part Three of the thesis. Part Three also discusses quality in qualitative research, and applies existing guidance to the empirical work presented in Part Two in an attempt to critically evaluate the quality of this study