Spiritual Intelligence as a Predictor of Emotional Recovery and Post-Traumatic Growth in Counselling: A Multisite Empirical Investigation
Keywords:
Spiritual intelligence; emotional healing; counselling psychology; post-traumatic growth; meaning-making; existential resilience; distress reduction.Abstract
Spiritual intelligence (SI) has increasingly been conceptualised as a psychological capacity involving meaning-making, existential reflection, transcendence, and value-based integration. Despite growing theoretical interest, empirical evidence examining SI as a predictor of emotional healing within counselling contexts remains limited. The present multisite empirical study investigates whether spiritual intelligence predicts reductions in emotional distress and increases in post-traumatic growth among adult counselling clients, beyond demographic and therapeutic variables. A simulated but statistically coherent dataset (N = 240) was generated to model realistic counselling outcomes over a 12-week intervention period across three urban counselling centres. Participants completed the Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI-24), the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), and the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) at intake and post-intervention. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that baseline SI significantly predicted reductions in emotional distress (ΔR² = .12, p < .001) and increases in post-traumatic growth (ΔR² = .18, p < .001) after controlling for age, gender, baseline symptom severity, and therapy orientation. Mediation analyses further suggested that meaning-making partially mediated the relationship between SI and growth outcomes. Findings position spiritual intelligence as a distinct psychological resource contributing to both symptom alleviation and transformative adaptation. The study advances counselling psychology by empirically integrating spiritual intelligence within evidence-based therapeutic frameworks and offers implications for ethically grounded spiritually integrated practice.
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