Spirituality enhances medical care for those coping with serious illness. And it boosts overall health outcomes, even at a population level.
Those assertions are based on a review of more than two decades of high-quality studies that show benefits of seeing and nurturing a patient’s spirituality as part of medical care or public health.
The findings, led by researchers from Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program and colleagues from the university’s Initiative on Health, Religion and Spiritualityamong others, were published earlier this month in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The link between body and soul is not a new discovery, according to Dr. Tracy A. Balboni, co-director of the Harvard initiative and a professor of radiation oncology and the study’s lead author. She said the association is especially known between communal forms of spirituality and key outcomes like reductions in all-cause mortality, suicide, depression and substance abuse,