The human being's spiritual experiences in a mental healthcare context; their positive and negative meaning and impact on health--a hermeneutic approach.

Patients' spiritual experiences in mental healthcare carry positive, negative, or both positive and negative meanings, which caregivers often mistakenly dismiss as mere religious speculation. Through a hermeneutic interpretation of 32 stories from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, analyzed from a Caring Science perspective that views humans as a unity of body, psyche, and spirit, three themes emerged: spirituality's positive meanings, its negative meanings, and its simultaneously negative and positive meanings. The findings suggest that mental health caregivers must address patients' spiritual dimension to provide adequate care.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The study aims at describing different meanings of patients' spiritual experiences and their impact on patients' health in mental healthcare. The different contents of patients' spiritual experiences are often understood by caregivers as the expressions of patients' religious speculation. The study has a hermeneutic approach, inspired by Gadamer. Its theoretical pre-understanding is Caring Science perspective, according to which the human being is a unity of body, psyche and spirit. The sources are 32 stories selected from William James' book (1956) The Varieties of Religious Experience. They are hermeneutically interpreted and discussed in the light of international research on patients' spirituality to gain a deeper understanding. The results are three main themes: (i) the positive meanings of spirituality, (ii) the negative meanings of spirituality and (iii) the both negative and positive meaning of spirituality. Therefore, it is a very important task for mental caregivers to address patients' spiritual dimension to help them adequately.