Hope is essential to physical and psychosocial well-being and plays a central role in one's ability to deal with illness and suffering. It's relationship to spiritual well-being, however, has not been explored empirically. This article addresses the conceptual similarities of hope and spiritual well-being and reports the results of a correlational study examining the relationship in a sample of healthy individuals. While hope was found to be related to both the religious and existential dimensions of spiritual well-being, the relationship with existential well-being was significantly stronger. Questions are raised concerning the developmental relationship of hope and spiritual well-being, and the importance of spiritual well-being in facilitating hope in others is addressed.

As a part of human spirituality, religion has been theorized to influence the health of the individual, both positively and negatively. Although the nursing literature has focused recently on broad aspects of spirituality, the specifics of religious influences on health have been examined cursorily or have been ignored. This article reviews the major empirical data on religion and mental health that are pertinent to nursing. Three areas covered are mental health impact, coping, and aging. Suggestions for future research on the subject are presented.

As a professional, the nurse is called upon to serve as a role model for positive health behaviours. Because the practise of these behaviours may effect one's effectiveness as a role model, it is important to determine whether nurses lead a so-called preventive lifestyle and to identify what factors are predictive of compliance. Previous researchers have tended to examine individual behaviours. In this study, a prevention index was used to examine an overall preventive lifestyle. For a sample of senior year nursing students, the preventive behaviours were considered to be important. However, when compared to a national sample of females in the same age range, nursing students were found to be significantly less compliant for 12 of 19 behaviours and more compliant for only three behaviours. Both the desire to practise preventive behaviours and the perceived difficulty in doing so were the factors predictive of the level of compliance. Additional study is needed to determine how these factors can be mediated.

Without a cure on the horizon there is a need to identify ways to sustain hope and spiritual well‐being in patients with AIDS. This article examines the impact of AIDS on the emotional and spiritual health of its victims and summarizes current research findings on spiritual well‐being in the ill. It also summarizes the authors’study on hope and existential and spiritual well‐being in a group of 65 adult male patients who were either serum positive for the human immunodeficient virus or who had been diagnosed with AIDS Related Complex or AIDS.

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