Stanley Arumugam

Evaluation of a Clergy Stress Management Intervention Stanley Arumugam

The book is a highly original contribution to community psychological knowledge and intervention in its special focus on religious institutions and spiritual communities in general, and in particular those serving the needs of communities historically discriminated against by the apartheid policy. It advances in-depth knowledge and specialist expertise into the hitherto under-researched and life-sustaining area of socio-spiritual community dynamics and healing. The researcher brought vast specialized experience and expertise in his interventions, which, through their therapeutic value to thirty-three, first-line pastoral trauma counselors, has far reaching and ongoing therapeutic community psychological effects in the four respective communities. In its recharging of inherent spiritual resources that mediate and reduce the experience of clergy stress, the process is self-sustaining. As qualitative research, the thesis has an outstanding authenticity. The general phenomenological and community psychological approach and style of the researcher affords the reader an experience of collaborative learning as guest, partner and ally to the four religious communities. Prof Steve Edwards.