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Grief
Published in Lisa Zammit, Georgeanne Schopp, Relational Care, 2022
Lisa Zammit, Georgeanne Schopp
According to Kubler-Ross (1969), spiritual suffering evolves from the perception of disease as divine punishment. Catastrophic illness or trauma may foster a spiritual crisis. Feelings of guilt can cloud understanding of the medical circumstances.
Spirituality of caring
Published in Barbara Hemphill, Occupational Therapy and Spirituality, 2019
A caring person is in constant pursuit of knowledge about the self. Knowing the self is consistent with the concept of the therapeutic use of self. In the therapeutic environment, to interact in community with another person, it is important to have knowledge about the self and about the techniques of therapy. Therapists can assume that the clients they see in the clinic are there as a result of grief or loss and are experiencing a spiritual crisis. The term spiritual crisis or spiritual distress describes a pervasive disruption in a person’s spiritual life (Hasselkus, 2002) resulting from injury or disease. When the body is threatened, attacked, or in the process of debilitation and malfunction, the person experiences a situation that may manifest as fear and anxiety. Often, people regress to a time when they felt safe and free from pain. This mental process leaves them somewhat helpless and unable to function in the usual way. A person confined to bed, for example, has had to withdraw from meaningful activities and contact with family, friends, and the community and therefore will feel a sense of loss. If the person is hospitalized, he or she is separated from the physical environment and perceives a threat to his or her body and, thus, to the self. For many people, these losses include their community of faith and the worship and other activities to which they are accustomed. Their participation in the life of worshiping is lost.
Spiritual Care
Published in Margaret O’Connor, Sanchia Aranda, Susie Wilkinson, Palliative Care Nursing, 2018
The quality of relationship is the key to spiritual care. In forming such relationships, nurses are often the primary providers of personal support in response to spiritual crisis. Furthermore, nurses should be intimately involved in a palliative-care team’s assessment and development of spiritual-care plans. These contributions require cooperation with patients and with other members of the team, in particular with those with have expertise in spiritual care. Nurses make an indispensable contribution to spiritual care, but they do not own it and direct it. Nor does any other profession. Spiritual care can take place only in active partnership with the patient.
Screening for psychosocial distress in pediatric cancer patients: An examination of feasibility in a single institution
Published in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, 2019
Fiona Schulte, K. Brooke Russell, Wendy Pelletier, Laura Scott-Lane, Gregory M. T. Guilcher, Douglas Strother, Deborah Dewey
Survival rates of pediatric cancers have increased dramatically in recent years and today, approximately 83% of those diagnosed with a childhood malignancy in Canada will survive [1]. While medical advances for pediatric cancers are encouraging, patients diagnosed with cancer are at increased risk of experiencing psychosocial distress at the time of diagnosis, in the months following, and into survivorship [2]. Psychosocial distress has been defined as “an unpleasant experience of an emotional, psychological, social, or spiritual nature that interferes with the ability to cope with cancer treatment. It extends along a continuum from common normal feelings of vulnerability, sadness, and fears, to problems that are disabling, such as depression, anxiety, panic, and feeling isolated or in a spiritual crisis.” [3] Across the cancer continuum (diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship), the psychosocial impact on families can be devastating and may include interference with daily activities, disruption to social and family roles, social withdrawal, and cognitive deficits [4–6]. Distress at diagnosis can predict distress throughout the treatment and survivorship stages [7, 8].
Responding to Those Who Hope for a Miracle: Practices for Clinical Bioethicists
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2018
Trevor M. Bibler, Myrick C. Shinall, Devan Stahl
In many strands of Christian thought, this belief in the availability of miraculous cures for the faithful persists (Keener 2011). It should, therefore, not surprise clinicians that patients or surrogates may hope for a miracle when faced with a situation where medical care gives little room for optimism. Expressing belief in miracles can be a way of exerting power and contesting secular medicine's dismal prognosis in a situation where the patient or surrogate may feel powerless. Others may view the clinic as a venue to display their long-held faith, which, in turn, will result in a miracle cure. For others, a sustained belief in the availability of miracles can produce a profound spiritual crisis if the hoped-for miracle never occurs. For many Christians, the prevalence and power of miracles they heard in Sunday School and continue to hear preached in church create the conditions for invoking miracles, especially when medicine cannot produce a desired outcome.
Distress in post-treatment hematological cancer survivors: Prevalence and predictors
Published in Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 2020
Deborah Raphael, Rosemary Frey, Merryn Gott
Distress as a measure of psychosocial sequelae is useful because many cancer survivors may be suffering from emotional upheaval which will not necessarily meet the diagnostic criteria for a psychological disorder.19 Distress has been defined as “a multifactorial unpleasant experience of a psychological (i.e., cognitive, behavioural, emotional), social, spiritual, and/or physical nature that may interfere with the ability to cope effectively with cancer, its physical symptoms, and its treatment. Distress extends along a continuum, ranging from common normal feelings of vulnerability, sadness, and fears to problems that can become disabling, such as depression, anxiety, panic, social isolation, and existential and spiritual crisis.”11