Hope and its Relationship to Spiritual Well-Being

Abstract

Hope is essential to physical and psychosocial well-being and plays a central role in one's ability to deal with illness and suffering. It's relationship to spiritual well-being, however, has not been explored empirically. This article addresses the conceptual similarities of hope and spiritual well-being and reports the results of a correlational study examining the relationship in a sample of healthy individuals. While hope was found to be related to both the religious and existential dimensions of spiritual well-being, the relationship with existential well-being was significantly stronger. Questions are raised concerning the developmental relationship of hope and spiritual well-being, and the importance of spiritual well-being in facilitating hope in others is addressed.

Spiritual Disposition and Understanding Illness

“…Psychosomatic medicine has long recognized that emotions such as laughter, love, and hope have a positive effect on the healing process (Carson, Soeken, & Grimm, 1988;Richardson, 2000). Cancer studies have consistently demonstrated that hope is an essential element in the coping process (Mytko & Knight, 1999;Rustøen, 1995).…”

“…Research has shown the importance of belief and hope in the areas of physical and mental health (Nekolaichuk, Jevne, & Maguire 1999;Gall & Cornblat, 2002). Multidisciplinary writers such as theologians, health care providers, and philosophers have proposed that hope consists of four major themes: future orientation, goal setting, action, and relationships and is an effective coping mechanism for dealing with illness and suffering (Carson et al, 1988). All four themes need to be operating concurrently to aid individuals to cope with and transform their experience with illness.…”

“…Hope is dependent upon one's belief in something greater than one's self, regardless of how one understands the Transcendent (Centers, 2001). Spiritual hope is able to detach itself from worldly desires and maintain a sense of tranquillity around the suffering (Carson et al, 1988). In this way, hope differs from optimism which can be seen as a type of presumption that can at times ignore the realities of suffering, injustice, failure, and tragedy (Lane, 1996).…”

Review of Religion and Mental Health

“…An article by Carson, Soeken, and Grimm (1988) related hope to .spiritual well-being, existential well-being, and religious well-be-Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 16:13 20 November 2014 ing. "Responses showed that both trait and state hope are positively related to spiritual well-being, existential well-being, and religious well-being."…”

Religion and Adult Mental Health: State of the Science in Nursing

“…Over several studies, using Paloutzian and Ellison's ( 1982) spiritual well-being scale, religious well-being has been correlated with a variety of other variables. For example, religious well-being has been positively correlated with hardiness, a concept defined by Kobasa ( 1979) to include challenge, commitment, and control (Carson & Green, 1992), and hope (Carson et al, 1988;Carson et al, 1990;Mickley et al, 1992); and negatively correlated with depression (Fehring et al, 1987) and loneliness (Miller, 1985;Paloutzian & Ellison, 1982) in samples of both ill and well adults.…”