Latter-Day Saint Clients' Preferences for a Religious Match With a Psychotherapist

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the preferences of psychotherapy clients who identify as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) for religious matching with a therapist. Participating clients (N = 100) were exposed to 3 probability discounting scenarios where the type of therapist (LDS, Christian but not LDS, religious but not Christian, not religious) and the efficacy of their chosen treatment (ranging from 10% to 70%) were manipulated. Across conditions, the LDS clients were willing to sacrifice a significant amount of treatment empirical support in order to work with an LDS therapist (Cohen's ds ranging from 0.81 to 1.03). Further, they expressed significantly stronger preferences for an LDS therapist over a nonreligious therapist compared to the other 2 conditions. Stronger preferences for an LDS therapists were also observed for highly religious clients, compared to less religious participants. These results suggest that client-therapist religious matching in psychotherapy may be important for many LDS clients. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.