Papers on Spirituality-Religiosity Related to Physical-Mental Health and Wellbeing The “Attitudes Related to Spirituality Scale” (ARES) proved to be a reliable, valid, and stable one-dimensional instrument for use in the Portuguese-speaking population and could be studied for validity in other cultures and languages. developed a new scale to evaluate spirituality and then assessed its reliability and validity. The authors constructed a framework representing spirituality as a quantifiable construct, and this framework may serve to increase understanding of this topic's complexity. investigated the definitions of spirituality in the healthcare field, identifying its main dimensions after a systematic review of scientific journals. Papers on Conceptual Definitions and Research Tools The selection of articles invites us to reflect on the many interesting possibilities in the interface between spirituality and mental health. Such awareness may impact academic understanding, clinical practice, institutional programs, and government policies. This topic aims not to find a one-size-fits-all solution for the many terminological issues in the field of spirituality but to expand the discussion and help advance awareness of the relevance and importance of spiritual dimensions in patient care. The collected material may interest practitioners or scholars involved in health or behavioral sciences. This Research Topic explored the intersection of various “spiritual” conceptions with health care and their resulting clinical implications. For example, “spiritual-but-not-religious” is an increasingly popular self-designated faith affiliation ( Saad and de Medeiros, 2020).

More recently, additional secular forms of spiritual experiences have arisen from rationalistic and humanistic analytic thinking. In addition, the term “spiritual” remains an open, fluid concept without a single, universally accepted definition across health care and research. Furthermore, professionals might be confronted by prejudiced behaviors and attitudes of colleagues or managers. The task is even more challenging because most health care courses do not prepare graduates in this field. However, health professionals and researchers addressing spiritual issues have the challenge of dealing with an enormous spectrum of spirituality and religious beliefs. Therefore, an awareness of the patient's spiritual values and experiences is paramount in providing high-standard healthcare training and clinical practice. Near-death experiences are also intriguing phenomena that defy purely materialistic explanations. For example, studies of altered consciousness associated with mediumistic and spontaneous spiritual awakening experiences have important implications for the intersection between physiology, consciousness, and spirituality ( Maraldi, 2021 Tressoldi et al., 2022). On the other hand, spiritual struggles can aggravate stress and adversely affect patients' health.ĭimensions of spirituality in health care and research can also encompass the empirical study of spiritual and paranormal experiences, usually referred to as anomalous experiences in the academic literature. Spiritual coping, or the use of faith-related practices and conceptions to deal with threatening situations positively, may be a valuable resource for well-being. Furthermore, biological and psychological changes have been documented in acts of prayer, forgiveness, gratitude, contemplation, sacred rituals, and blessings ( Blažević, 2021). Spiritual well-being has been shown to modulate neurovegetative functions, mainly through stress reduction ( Saad et al., 2019 Peres et al., 2020). Scientific studies have demonstrated positive and causal associations between spiritual well-being and good physical and mental health parameters in recent decades.

Spiritual phenomena definition