Spiritual health may impact behavior
June 1, 1999 4 minutes read
Spiritual health may impact behavior
A greater chance of healthy lifestyle seen
The mind-body-spirit link has long been a foundational tenet of wellness, and many health promotion practitioners assert that a healthy spiritual life and a healthy physical life go hand in hand. Now, a study of 200 workers brings us a step closer to a scientific demonstration that such a link truly exists.
The study, which looked at 200 workers at a large home fitness equipment company in northern Utah, found that "a moderate to small positive linear relationship does exist" between spiritual health and health-promoting behaviors.1
The authors further asserted that, "It may be justifiable to include an emphasis on psychosocial variables in worksite wellness programs. Further, it may be useful to emphasize the larger dimension of spiritual health in order to modify employee health behaviors, rather than targeting isolated psychosocial behaviors."1
The study’s lead author, Phillip J. Waite, MS, CHES, is currently a teaching assistant at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City. At the time of the study, in late spring 1997, he was serving as the fitness equipment company’s wellness coordinator.
"As health promotion people, we have tended to stress areas like educating employees about nutrition, stress management, major cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking, and so forth," explains Waite. "But if you look in the literature, that approach has had only moderate results to say the least."
People on the cutting edge of wellness research are now paying more attention to those things that are most meaningful to individual employees, he continues. "Traditional wellness issues are on the surface level; we need to get down to those things that are more important to people in order to obtain change in their behaviors," he asserts.
Looking for a link
Is spirituality one of those "things"? That’s what Waite set out to prove. He selected the particular areas of wellness referred to above, including:
• exercise;
• nutrition;
• stress management;
• smoking cessation.
He then sought to find if there was a "product-moment correlation" between spiritual health and these key areas. "Product-moment correlation is a measure of association — how highly are they associated?" he explains. "It’s used to determine if there’s a linear relationship — as one variable goes up, does the other go up? The point was to determine whether there is a relationship between people with high levels of spiritual health and positive healthy behaviors. We suspected there would be."
Of the 200 workers surveyed, 100 worked on an assembly line putting together home exercise equipment. The other 100 were administrative workers. They were asked to respond to assertions such as: "I believe that my life has a purpose" "I feel content and at peace with myself" and "I feel connected with some force greater than myself."
The results "were indicative that there’s a pretty good relationship there," says Waite.
Integrating spirituality into your wellness program does not necessarily mean talking about religion, Waite emphasizes. In fact, he is well aware that the subject can make employees extremely uncomfortable.
Tread carefully with religious issues
"You have to be careful about introducing any type of religious programming," he observes. "What [spirituality programming] does get at are things like people having a purpose in life, a view of the world, and a belief system that provides meaning and purpose."
Waite notes that a colleague of his, Glenn Richardson, is currently involved in "resiliency training" in the corporate setting. "His type of approach involves a lot of introspective activities in small groups — writing projects, creativity exercises, having people look at their lives, what their dream is in life, what they want to do with their lives," he explains.
Once employees tap into this area of their lives — an area they may have previously ignored — and gained meaning and purpose, "they tend to pick up more positive health behaviors along the way," Waite says.
What’s more, that "sense of meaning" may in itself be stress-reducing. "A sense of meaning does provide a sense of control, which mitigates against stress," says Waite. "Spirituality is a larger concept that may envelop internal locus of control,’ rather than an external control, which can give them more control over their health, too."
[Editor’s note: For more information contact Phillip J. Waite, 1431 University Village, Salt Lake City, UT 84108. Telephone: (801) 581-9964.]
Reference
1. Waite PJ, et al. The correlation between spiritual well-being and health behaviors. Am J Health Promot 1999; 13(3):159-162.
Additional Resources
• Bensley R. Spiritual health as a component of worksite health promotion/wellness programming: a review of the literature. J Health Educ 1991;22:352-353.
• Chapman L. Spiritual health: a component missing from health promotion. Am J Health Promot 1986; 1:38-41.
• Fahlberg L, Fahlberg L. Exploring spirituality and consciousness with an expanded science: beyond the ego with empiricism, phenomenology, and contemplation. Am J Health Promot 1991; 5:273-281.
• Hawks S, et al. Review of spiritual health: definition, role, and intervention strategies in health promotion. Am J Health Promot 1995; 9:371-378.
• Seaward B. Reflections on human spirituality for the worksite. Am J Health Promot 1995; 9:165-168.
• Hawks S. Spiritual health: definition and theory. Wellness Perspect 1994; 10:3-13.
• Walker S, et al. The health-promoting life-style profile: development and psychometric characteristics. Nurs Res 1987; 36:76-81.
• Bensley R. Defining spiritual health: a review of the literature. J Health Educ 1991; 22:287-290.
• Richardson G. The Resiliency Training Manual. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Communications; 1995.
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