The Correlation between Spiritual Well-Being and Health Behaviors

Abstract

Contemporary worksite wellness programs may be limited in their ability to produce significant long-term behavior change, in part, because they fail to adequately address important psychosocial issues related to health behaviors. Research has been done recently, for example, that demonstrates moderate relationships between psychosocial constructs, such as self-esteem and locus of control, and health behaviors. Another psychosocial construct receiving greater attention lately is spiritual health.~-5 Some believe that this construct is really a broader measure of self-esteem, locus of control, connectedness, and possibly other psychosocial variables. 6 Hawks 6 states that spiritual health might be defined as a high level of faith, hope, and commitment in relation to a well-defined worldview or belief system that provides a sense of meaning and purpose to existence in general, and that offers an ethical path to personal fulfillment which includes connectedness to self, others and a higher power or larger reality. Attitudes of faith, hope, and commitment imply an internal locus of control, and following an ethical path that involves fulfillment, purpose, and meaning may lead to enhanced self-esteem and a sense of connectedness with self and others. In at least one study, correlations between connectedness, meaning and purpose, sense of coherence (well-defined worldview), and spiritual well-being were strong enough to support the premise that spiritual health may be a broader concept that encompasses some of these psychosocial variables (M. Hull, unpublished data, 1990). Little research has been done to determine if a relationship exists between spiritual health (sometimes called