Kontakt 2009, 11(2):406-412 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2009.063

Spirituality of psychiatric patientsHealth and Social Sciences

Ivan Farský^1,*, Katarína Žiaková¹, Igor Ondrejka², Peter Halama³

¹ Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Jesseniova lekárska fakulta v Martine, Ústav ošetrovateľstva

² Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Jesseniova lekárska fakulta v Martine, Psychiatrická klinika

³ Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, Filozofická fakulta

There is growing evidence that spirituality and its components (meaning of life, hope, relation to other people/nature/higher power or God) are important correlates of mental health. The Aim of our work was to assess spirituality and its components in psychiatric patients compared to healthy population. The study sample consisted of 124 patients hospitalized in Clinic of Psychiatry of JLF UK and MFN in Martin. There were 65 women and 59 men. The Control group consisted of 201 internal and external university students. There were 147 women and 54 men. All participants completed Nowotny Hope Scale, Life Meaningfulness Scale, Prague Spirituality Questionnaire PSQ 36 and Spiritual Well-being Scale. We found that Patients reported significantly lower level of global hope, life meaningfulness and spiritual well-being than control group. In addition they had significantly lower level of fellowship and reported significantly higher level of Eco-spirituality than students. On the basis according to our findings we suppose that psychiatric disorders have negative influence on spirituality of patients and may lead to decrease in hope, life meaningfulness and spiritual well-being.

Keywords: spirituality; nursing; psychiatric disorders; life meaningfulness; hope; spiritual well-being

Received: March 19, 2009; Accepted: September 21, 2009; Published: December 18, 2009  Show citation