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. 2025 Aug;64(4):3236-3254.
doi: 10.1007/s10943-025-02389-1. Epub 2025 Jul 28.

The Faith Relationship Interview for Adolescents: A Qualitative Explorative Study in the Netherlands to Evaluate a New Method to Integrate Religion in Psychotherapy

Sanne G Helder  1 , Gerda Mosterd-Pol  2 , Marieke van der Maten  2 , Hanneke Schaap-Jonker  3   4
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The Faith Relationship Interview for Adolescents: A Qualitative Explorative Study in the Netherlands to Evaluate a New Method to Integrate Religion in Psychotherapy

Sanne G Helder et al. J Relig Health. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

The faith relationship interview (FRI) has been recently developed as an intervention in which clients discuss their religious thoughts and feelings, their (development of the) God representations, and the parallels and differences between their relationship with God and with other people. In this explorative qualitative research, the FRI is evaluated with eight adolescent clients and four clinicians in the Netherlands. All participants reported to have positive experiences regarding the FRI and clients reported to have learned something about their God representations and about the parallel between their relationships with God and others. These results suggest that the FRI is a promising and valuable intervention for Christian clients and clinicians to integrate religion and God representations in psychotherapy.

Keywords: Faith relationship interview; God representations; Intervention; Psychotherapy; Religion.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interests: The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interest to disclose. Ethics approval: This research has been approved by the Science and Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Religion and Theology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) and by the ethical committee of the Centre for Research and Innovation in Christian Mental Health Care (KICG). Informed consent: Of all participants, and if needed of their parents in case they were younger than 16 years old, informed consent was obtained.

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