Helen Dowling Institute, Centre for Psycho-Oncology, Ultrecht, The Netherlands.
Psychooncology. 2010 Jun;19(6):565-72. doi: 10.1002/pon.1626.
Cancer places many demands on the patient and threatens the person's sense of meaning to life. It has been shown that cancer patients use their spirituality to cope with these experiences. The present literature review summarizes the research findings on the relationship between spirituality and emotional well-being. Special attention is given to the strength of the research findings.
A literature search was performed in Pubmed and Web of Science. Spirituality does not necessarily coincide with religiosity. Therefore, studies were excluded that focused on religiosity. Forty publications met the inclusion criteria: Twenty-seven studies that investigated the relationship between spirituality and well-being, and 13 publications that explored the relationship between meaning in life and well-being.
The majority of the cross-sectional studies (31 of 36) found a positive association between spirituality and well-being. The four studies with a longitudinal design showed mixed results. The significance of the findings is challenged, because most spirituality questionnaires contain several items that directly refer to emotional well-being.
Despite that the majority of the studies concluded that spirituality was associated with higher well-being, no definitive conclusions on this relationship can be drawn due to major methodological shortcomings of these studies. Longitudinal research utilizing spirituality and well-being measures that do not overlap in content is recommended.
癌症给患者带来诸多挑战，威胁其生命意义感。研究表明癌症患者会利用灵性来应对这些经历。本文献综述总结了有关灵性与情绪健康之间关系的研究结果。特别关注研究结果的强度。
在 Pubmed 和 Web of Science 中进行文献检索。灵性不一定与宗教信仰重合。因此，排除了专注于宗教信仰的研究。有 40 篇出版物符合纳入标准：27 项研究调查了灵性与幸福感之间的关系，13 项出版物探讨了生活意义与幸福感之间的关系。
大多数横断面研究（36 项中的 31 项）发现灵性与幸福感之间存在正相关。四项具有纵向设计的研究得出了混合结果。研究结果的意义受到质疑，因为大多数灵性问卷包含几个直接涉及情绪健康的项目。
尽管大多数研究得出结论认为灵性与更高的幸福感相关，但由于这些研究存在重大方法学缺陷，因此无法对此关系得出明确结论。建议进行利用灵性和幸福感测量且内容不重叠的纵向研究。
