Spirituality/religiosity is recognized as a resource to cope with burdening life events and chronic illness. However, less is known about the consequences of the lack of positive spiritual feelings. Spiritual dryness in clergy has been described as spiritual lethargy, a lack of vibrant spiritual encounter with God, and an absence of spiritual resources, such as spiritual renewal practices. To o...

OBJECTIVE Distinguishing the unique contributions and roles of chaplains as members of healthcare teams requires the fundamental step of articulating and critically evaluating conceptual models that guide practice. However, there is a paucity of well-described spiritual assessment models. Even fewer of the extant models prescribe interventions and describe desired outcomes corresponding to spir...

The purpose of this essay is to review the Grofs’ model of spiritual emergencies. The authors ask: Has the model been useful for identifying and treating psycho-spiritual distress? Should it be amended? Spiritual emergency can be defined as a crisis involving religious, transpersonal, and/or spiritual issues that provides opportunities for growth. Spiritual emergence, meanwhile, lends itself to...

Traumatic events may lead to dramatic changes in spirituality. The objective of this study was to explore whether posttraumatic spiritual transformation results not just from the traumatic event, but from spiritual experience during the crisis. The hypothesis tested was that survivors of a brush with death who had spiritual “near-death experiences” have greater spiritual growth and lesser spiri...

In this paper I am attempting to connect three aspects of Zhu Xi's (1130-1200) life and work. They are: (1) the "spiritual crisis" he experienced in his thirties; (2) his identification of Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) as the first true Confucian sage since Mencius; and (3) his concepts of taiji and li . My hypothesis is difficult to squeeze into one sentence. Basically, I am suggesting that (1) the s...

Shortly before his death in 1995, Kenneth B. Schwartz, a cancer patient at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), founded the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center. The Schwartz Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and advancing compassionate health care delivery, which provides hope to the patient, support to caregivers, and sustenance to the healing process. The center sponsors the...

BACKGROUND Patients' spiritual needs increase drastically after a diagnosis of cancer because of its threatening nature. It is very important to recognize any spiritual crisis. This study aimed to determine needs among Iranian patients with cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS This crosssectional study was undertaken among 200 patients with cancer referred to Alinasab and Shahid Ghazi Tabatabaie hos...

This article describes how an African American gay man living with AIDS used his spiritual, religious, and cultural strengths to resist internalized dislocation because of heterosexism and homophobia. He was able to experience a relocation of God from places that rejected him to places that were conducive to his healing. By using these strengths, he was able to reject his physician's prediction...