What is ‘Spiritual Health’? A Survey of Social Prescribers in the United Kingdom

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.