Spiritual Health in the Patients with Gastrointestinal Cancers and Its Relation with General Health

Today, issues related to meaning and spirituality are accepted as essential parts of chronic diseases’ experience as they may seriously affect people's attitude towards their ego, illness and future. The present study was conducted to investigate the spiritual health of the patients with gastrointestinal cancers and its association with general health.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 128 patients with gastrointestinal cancer ≤54 years with knowledge of their disease type at Imam Reza Hospital and Shahid Madani Hospital in Tabriz, Iran. Samples were selected using the simple sampling method. The spiritual status of the patients was evaluated using the Paloutzian & Ellison (1982) questionnaire & General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) and the checklist designed by the researchers, containing demographic characteristics. Data analysis, including the descriptive analytic statistics, independent t-test, correlation coefficient and Pearson correlation coefficient and regression model were done using SPSS V16 software.

Regarding Pearson correlation coefficient, there was a significant association between general health and spiritual well-being (p=0.003, r=0.71). Also, there was a direct and significant association between spiritual health in the religious section (p=0.01, r=0.51) and spiritual well-being in the existential (p=0.001, r=0.68) with general health.

Based on the results of this study, it could be concluded that most cancer patients have high spiritual health, this makes the patient more adaptable to their illness.