Do Chronic Pain Patients Wish Spiritual Aspects to Be Integrated in Their Medical Treatment? A Cross-Sectional Study of Multiple Facilities

Abstract

Background: Chronic pain is a complex, multidimensional experience. Spirituality is hypothesized to impact pain experience in various ways. Nevertheless, the role that spirituality plays in multimodal pain therapy remains controversial and, to date, quantitative data on whether and for which patients spiritual aspects should be considered in the treatment of chronic pain is lacking. The aim of this study was thus to investigate the proportion and characteristics of patients with chronic pain who wish spiritual aspects to be integrated in their treatment.Methods: Two hundred nine patients with chronic pain were recruited from five inpatient departments and outpatient clinics in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Patients filled out validated questionnaires, such as the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Resilience Scale (RS-11), the Spiritual and Religious Attitudes in Dealing with Illness (SpREUK), and the 12-item Spiritual Well-Being Scale (FACIT-Sp-12).Results: More than 60% (CI95%: 55.5–67.9%) of the patients wanted to address spiritual aspects in their treatment. These patients were significantly younger, had higher levels of education, and suffered from more frequent and more severe pain than patients who did not wish to address spiritual aspects. Furthermore, there were high correlations with existing spiritual resources and higher scores of spirituality.Conclusions: These results confirm that the majority of chronic pain patients wish spiritual aspects to be considered in their treatment. Additionally, the finding that these patients had more spiritual resources underlines the importance of integrating spiritual aspects in a resource-oriented, patient-centered care approach for this condition.

Relationship between Pain Catastrophizing and Perceived Wellness among Chronic Pain Patients

“…Being more resilient, Filipinos tend to be optimistic in the face of a medical condition (Camitan & Bajin, 2021); hence, a slightly high degree of psychological and intellectual wellness was found in this study. Chronic pain patients also tend to move towards spirituality (Hasenfratz et al, 2021), and culturally, Filipinos tend to be strong in their faith (Macaranas, 2021). This explains the slightly high degree of spiritual wellness among the patients in this study.…”

The Spiritual Aspect of Pain: An Integrative Review

“…Finally, the fields where the analyzes were implemented were university hospitals/health centers (Asadi-Piri et al, 2021 ; Braun et al, 2022 ; Hasenfratz et al, 2021 ; Hatefi et al, 2019 ; Vasigh et al, 2020 ; Yu et al, 2016 ), pain management clinics (Büssing et al, 2013 ; Harris et al, 2018 ; Rettke et al, 2021 ; Snell et al, 2019 ) and residences (Shropshire et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Related to the vision of patients and health professionals about spiritual care of pain, six studies answered to the question regarding both visions (Andersen et al, 2019 ; Booker et al, 2020 ; Hasenfratz et al, 2021 ; Owens et al, 2016 ; Perrin et al, 2021 ; Rettke et al, 2021 ; Yu et al, 2016 ). Four studies were qualitative.…”

“…Furthermore, depression mediated, partially (in interference) or totally (in catastrophizing), the links between spiritual distress and grief outcomes. Therefore, the results suggest that spiritual distress may exacerbate chronic pain Hasenfratz et al ( 2021 ), Switzerland To investigate the proportion and characteristics of chronic pain patients who want spiritual aspects to be integrated into their treatment Cross-sectional descriptive observational study n = 209 [patients with chronic pain] Ah hoc questionnaire, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Resilience Scale (RS-11), Spiritual and Religious Attitudes in Dealing with Illness (SpREUK), and 12-item Spiritual Well-Being Scale (FACIT-Sp-12) Of the chronic pain patients who participated, 61.7% wanted spiritual aspects to be considered in their medical treatment. Those who indicated a desire to include spiritual aspects in the treatment of chronic pain were significantly younger, spiritual, had a higher academic education, had grown up primarily in Switzerland, and experienced higher levels of pain Hatefi et al ( 2019 ), Iran To determine the relationship between religious coping (RC) and attachment to God with perceived pain in elderly people with chronic low back pain (CLBP) in Iran Cross-sectional descriptive observational study n = 300 [older adults with chronic low back pain] Ad hoc survey, Religion Coping Questionnaire, Attachment to God, Chronic Pain Acceptance and Visual Analog Scale for Pain The higher the level of CR and attachment to God, the more likely it is that pain will be reduced by increasing its acceptance.…”

The influence of cultural and religious factors on cross-national variations in the prevalence of chronic back and neck pain: an analysis of data from the global burden of disease 2019 study

“…The foregoing discussion makes it clear that the management of chronic neck and back pain, particularly in non-“Western” settings, requires a careful integration of both cultural factors and of religion/spirituality into treatment approaches ( 41 , 53 ). Such a wish is often reported by patients themselves ( 64 ). To achieve this effectively, it would be useful to identify those cultural factors, or those aspects of religious belief or practice, that are meaningfully associated with variations in the occurrence of these disorders.…”