Discussing your spiritual needs

Research involving service users of mental health services has found that many people still find talking about religious beliefs in mental health settings, or with health care professionals, difficult.
Examples of ways to begin thinking or talking about your, or others spiritual needs is to ask or think about questions like;

‘What keeps you going in times of difficulty?’

‘What do you think life is all about?’

Discussion about sense of belonging and personal values is also good for indicating feelings, beliefs and attitudes towards spirituality.

Spitirtual assessments

Spiritual assessments can be completed by health care professionals in order to evaluate individual spiritual needs, but also to identify the potential impact of beliefs on health outcomes and how beliefs may affect people’s decision making. It is recommended that both personal (inner) and external sources of spirituality resources are included when assessing needs, and in allowing some therapy time to be devoted to covering spiritual issues.

  • ‘Healing from within: A guide for assessing the religious and spiritual aspects of people’s lives’ (Culliford & Johnson, 2003) leaflet, is one example of a spiritual assessment tool that can be used to assess individual spiritual needs.

If spirituality is important to you, and you feel that this is not being adequately provided for within your treatment or care plan, this is something you can raise with your health care professional (psychiatrist, care support worker etc) as the 1992 NHS management executive guidelines state that ‘provider units should make adequate provision for the spiritual needs of their patients,’ and as a result there is now access to a chaplain or religious leader in most psychiatric hospitals.