Spiritual Health in Children: A Review Study Australia

Achieving spiritual health is an aspect of human development and there are differences in the spiritual health of children with adults. Despite the importance of the issue of children’s spiritual health, there are very few studies in this field. Therefore, this review study was conducted to review the knowledge about children’s spiritual health in the sources.

This scoping review study was performed using the JBI checklist. The electronic databases of PubMed, Scopus, Ambis, Web of Science, Google Scholar, the database of Iranian journals and magazines, and the database of the Jihad Daneshgahi Scientific Information Center were searched for information.

Spiritual health in children means awareness, inner experience of wonders, curiosity, and belief in a strong force. The spiritual health in children are classified into three dimensions: emotional, relational, and existential. Important factors affecting children’s spiritual health were the child’s socio-cultural context, children’s own experiences, their relationship with others, parental and media behaviors, and spiritual health outcomes, including a wide range of positive outcomes.

The findings of the present study showed that the concept of spiritual health and its dimensions in children are as ambiguous as adults and also less attention has been paied to this issue. On the other hand, based on the findings of the present study, most studies in this field have been done in recent years, which could be a sign of increased sensitivity in this area. Therefore, considering the important role and impact of the cultural context of each country, it is necessary to conduct studies to explain the spiritual health of children and its indicators.