Spirituality and health: an exploratory study of hospital patients' perspectives

Abstract

The relationship between spirituality/religion and health is receiving increasing academic interest, but few studies have explored the experience of Australians. This paper presents data from an exploratory survey of patients and families in a public teaching hospital in Sydney. The findings show that the majority of hospital service users:

Religiosity, spirituality, mental health, and mental health treatment outcomes in Australia: a systematic literature review

“…While Australia has yet to explore whether or not belief God or a higher power is related to mental health, particularly in the context of mental health patients and psychiatric treatment outcomes, the papers sourced with data collection in this search do, however, appear to show that spirituality and religion can be important, prevalent and relevant in mental health care settings. For instance, Hilbers et al (2010) survey revealed that 75% of the participants said spirituality or religious beliefs of some kind religion were important to them, and over 80% thought their health was affected by spiritual and religious beliefs. In addition, spirituality could provide protection in times of crisis by providing another perspective on the meaning of life, as Wilding (2007) found in selected interviews.…”

“…Patient Religiosity was also measured in Payman et al (2008) study on depressed elderly Australians by the Duke University Religion Index (Koenig, George, & Peterson, 1997) -this five item scale asked about frequency of religious attendance, frequency of participation in private religious activities such as prayer, meditation, or Bible study, and intrinsic religiosity which asks patients to rate themselves to these questions: "My religious beliefs are what really lies behind my whole approach to life," "I try hard to carry my religion over into all other dealings in life," and, "In my life, I experience the presence of the Divine." Hilbers et al (2010) sample consisted of hospital patients. The study used a survey instrument that comprised of 18 core items to assess the importance of spirituality, most of which were phrased as closed-choice statements which were available in English, Chinese, Arabic and Greek.…”

“…With this in consideration, throughout this paper, we will use the term religiosity as an all encompassing term, covering aspects of religion and spirituality. While some authors use religion and spirituality interchangeably (D'Souza, 2007;Francis & Kaldor, 2002;Williams & Sternthal, 2007), most recognise that participants usually distinguish a difference between the two, and acknowledge this in their research (D'Souza & George, 2006;Hilbers et al, 2010, Koenig, 2007Moxey et al, 2011;Wilding et al, 2006). For the purposes of the current paper, the term religiosity is used as an overarching descriptive term, which we define operationally as religion/spirituality.…”

“…Within the limited Australian literature of religiosity, the term spirituality is often discussed as a less-structured, personal, self-defined branch of religiosity (Francis & Kaldor, 2002;Hilbers, Haynes, & Kivikko, 2010;Koenig, 2007;Lo, 2003;Wilding, 2007;Wilding et al, 2006). Although international debate has stemmed over what spirituality entails, the Australian literature tends to group spirituality with an individual's belief in God or higher power, providing more defined boundaries around the dimensions of religiosity, and thus creating two clear variables for comparison in studies of mental health and/or psychiatric treatment outcomes -spirituality and religion (Mason, Deane, Kelly, & Crowe, 2009;Payman et al, 2008;Wilding et al, 2006).…”

“…For example, Hilbers et al (2010) sought to understand if aspects of religiosity were important to the patients and their families, and whether or not acknowledging religiosity's presence in the hospital would be appropriate. While only 43% of respondents indicated they belonged to a community with shared beliefs or place of worship or spiritual group, over 70% of those surveyed said it was helpful for hospital staff to ask about their beliefs.…”