P eople often think about wellness in terms of physical health — nutrition, exercise, weight management, etc., but it is so much more. Wellness is a holistic integration of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, fueling the body, engaging the mind, and nurturing the spirit (1). Although it always includes striving for health, it’s more about living life fully (1), and is “a lifestyle and a...

BACKGROUND Inspired by a 2,500-year-old Buddhist tradition, the Zen Hospice Project (ZHP) provides residential hospice care, volunteer programs, and educational efforts that cultivate wisdom and compassion in service. OBJECTIVE The present study was designed to understand how being with dying hospice residents affects hospice volunteers well-being and the role of spiritual practice in amelior...

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a multi-component smoking cessation intervention in African American women residing in public housing. The intervention consisted of: (a) nurse led behavioral/empowerment counseling; (b) nicotine replacement therapy; and, (c) community health workers to enhance smoking self-efficacy, social support, and spiritual well-being. The results...

Although meditation is believed to be over five thousand years old, scientific research on it is in its infancy. Mitigating the extensive negative biochemical effects of stress is a superficially discussed target of Alzheimer's disease (AD) prevention, yet may be critically important. This paper reviews lifestyle and stress as possible factors contributing to AD and meditation's effects on cogn...

OBJECTIVE This mixed methods study sought to evaluate the outcomes of an integrative Reiki volunteer program in an academic medical oncology center setting. METHOD We used de-identified program evaluation data to perform both quantitative and qualitative analyses of participants' experiences of Reiki sessions. The quantitative data were collected pre- and postsession using a modified version ...

Background: Spiritual well-being is an important issue in health sciences, hence the need for validated instruments to assess this aspect of health in the Iranian population. The aim of the current study was to determine the validity of the Persian versions of 2 most common measures of spiritual health (Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire [SWBQ] or Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure [...

background: several studies are available on the lifestyle, psychological and mental health of the elderly adults. this study aimed to compare the spiritual well-being and happiness in the elderly who lived in sanitariums with those lived in the community. methods: a comparative study was conducted on 384 elderly adults. a census sampling was used in sanitariums and a convenience sampling was p...

In recent years, medical and allied health publications have begun to address various topics on spirituality. Scholars have posited numerous definitions of spirituality and wrestled with the notion of spiritual pain and suffering. Researchers have examined the relationship between spirituality and health and explored, among other topics, patients' perceptions of their spiritual needs, particula...

Despite the plethora of research linking spirituality, religiosity and psychological well-being among people living with medical illnesses, the role of afterlife beliefs on psychological functioning has been virtually ignored. The present investigation assessed afterlife beliefs, spiritual well-being and psychological functioning at the end of life among 276 terminally ill cancer patients. Resu...

BACKGROUND Depression in adolescents and young adults is a major mental health condition that requires attention. Research suggests that approaches that include spiritual concepts and are delivered through an online platform are a potentially beneficial approach to treating/managing depression in this population. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an 8-week online sp...