Futurology of Spiritual Health Services in Iran: A Pathological Review

Implementing holistic health, the development of spirituality, and Islamic morality in society requires theory-based spiritual health services. The health system needs to provide spiritual health care in the spectrum of health and disease, at all levels of prevention and throughout life. This study aimed to explain the pathology of Iranian spiritual health services to design targeted measures to shape a desirable future.

This Islamic futurology was conducted in 18 months based on the Manteghi et al. model in three stages: 1) Analytical phase:non-systematic review of evidence with PRISMA protocol by searching for religious and scientific evidences during the last three decades in scientific databases and analysis of 32 articles based on Walker and Avant conceptual analysis model; 2) Interpretive stage: based on the personality theory and pathology theory of the Sound Heart model; 3) Intuitive phase: by content analysis of data obtained from interviews with 25 national experts. To check the strength, accuracy, completeness, and possibility of logical understanding of the findings, in addition to Morse et al.'s suggestions, two specialized panels were conducted in the Spiritual Health Department of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

The challenges were listed in three sections: 1) Research field: lack of jurisprudential supervision of research, lack of use of religious evidence by academics, preparation of religiosity assessment questionnaires, lack of theorizing; 2) Educational field: lack of spiritual health education in the university, lack of training of spiritual mentor professors, lack of spiritual health textbooks; 3) Clinical services field: lack of standards for spiritual health services, lack of assessment of competence of spiritual caregivers, neglect of spiritual needs of people, neglect of spiritual self-care, lack of implementation of theory-based spiritual care.

To design the ideal future of spiritual health, it is recommended to prepare clinical standards, -to train mentor professors, to implement competency-based longitudinal training, and provide theory-based spiritual health services by a qualified and licensed treatment team.