Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Orla Whitehead, Professor Amy O'DonnellORCiD, Professor Barbara HanrattyORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2025.Social prescribing aims to provide holistic care to patients beyond that offered in consultations with clinical health professionals. Support may be directed at many aspects of health and well-being, including spiritual health. Spiritual health is known to be associated with many other physical, mental and rehabilitation health outcomes. How social prescribers define and understand ‘spiritual health’ is unknown. In this survey, we aim to explore what UK social prescribers understand by the term “spiritual health.” We asked social prescribers: ‘what does spiritual health mean to you?’ Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics. Free text data were subject to deductive thematic analysis using a priori themes from the literature on definitions of spiritual health. One hundred and seventy-one social prescribing link workers participated; 153 gave a definition of spiritual health. Twice as many participants described themselves as spiritual than described themselves as religious. Definitions of spiritual health fell into three themes: 1. A sense of self, peace, meaning and purpose; 2. Connections to others, the world, or a deity; 3. Spiritual or religious practice. Spiritual health appears to be a term with meaning to UK social prescribers, distinct from religiosity. Use of this ‘working definition’ of spiritual health will allow further research into how spiritual health fits within social prescribing in the UK to move forwards.
Author(s): Whitehead IO, O'Donnell A, Hanratty B
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Religion and Health
Year: 2025
Pages: epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 14/11/2025
Acceptance date: 25/10/2025
Date deposited: 24/11/2025
ISSN (print): 0022-4197
ISSN (electronic): 1573-6571
Publisher: Springer
URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-025-02488-z
DOI: 10.1007/s10943-025-02488-z
Data Access Statement: Data are saved on Newcastle University secure servers and may be available in negotiation with the first author. While participants were not consented to allow public sharing of this data, data are available upon reasonable request to the authors
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
