Spirituality and Health

Friends:

So I went browsing today across a section of the internet with the search terms "spirituality and health" to see what I could see. Similar to the bear going over the mountain, I found a lot of sites touting improvements in health and wellness, but no spirituality focus (ala the "other side of the mountain"). For clearness - let's use the 1999 definition of spirituality from the Association of American Medical Colleges Medical School Objectives Report III: "Spirituality is recognized as a factor that contributes to health in many persons. The concept of spirituality is found in all cultures and societies. It is expressed in an individual’s search for ultimate meaning through participation in religion and/or belief in God, family, naturalism, rationalism, humanism and the arts. All these factors can influence how patients and health care professionals perceive health and illness and how they interact with one another."

SO, what did I find in my search? One site, The Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota (www.chs.umn.edu), has some great things going on in complementary and alternative health, but next to nothing in spirituality. They discussed a "circle of health" that contains 6 domains - Intention, Balance, Compassion, Love, Mindfulness and Connection; but did not link spiritual unhealth integrally with physical/mental unhealth.

Isn't it interesting that "integrative health" is currently defined as providing opportunities for people to explore alternative or complementary therapies/treatments for disease - not the integration of spirituality or the need for spiritual formation to address the changing health of a person during their life? Seems to me that we've gotten a bit far afield, as it were, from the point of journeying towards wholeness.

I also went to some major "patient networking sites" such as PeopleLikeMe, Inspire, HealthCentral and CureTogether. Each of them offered connectional opportunities and sharing, but none of them offered anything for an ailing soul. Further, some of these sites allowed for shairng of experiences and symptomatology, without any health or spiritual professional input to help persons understand what these symptoms may or may not mean (especially in cyclical syndromes such as Bipolar disease and chronic relapsing/remitting illness such as MS).

The George Washington Insitute for Spirituality and Health (www.gwish.org) however, was different. It is focused on educating and training healthcare providers to focus on spiritual needs in addition to physiologic needs. Good tools were seen for quick spiritual assessments and "ice breaker" questions. This is where Possibilities Journey, Inc., sees potential (www.possjrny.org)! If we can get a critical mass of healthcare providers assessing (or even just asking and actively listening) to people about how their spiritual beliefs inform their healthcare decisions, well then, we're really into a transformative phase of healthcare delivery.

I'm hopeful that the conversations I'm starting to have with different healthcare groups around assessing for the presence of spirituality, and then augmenting that which is found to allow a person to have the spiritual support that is needed to address issues of health, wellness and wholeness, will bear fruit.

I'd be very interested in hearing what you all have to say about your own experience(s) with spirituality and health. I'd also like to know how you feel about the definition of spirituality quoted above - does it reflect your experience?

Peace,
Dan