Indian Health Care Professionals’ Attitude Towards Spiritual Healing and Its Role in Alleviating Stigma of Psychiatric Services

Abstract

Persons with mental illnesses in India and rest of developing world continue to consult religious/spiritual (R/S) healers or traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM) professionals prior to seeking psychiatric services that are devoid of spiritual components of care. We aim to understand TCAM and allopathic professionals' perspectives on patients' R/S needs within mental health services, cross-sectional study was conducted at five TCAM and two allopathic tertiary care hospitals in three different Indian states; 393 participants completed RSMPP, a self-administered, semi-structured survey questionnaire. Perspectives of TCAM and allopathic health professionals on role of spirituality in mental health care were compared. Substantial percentage, 43.7 % TCAM and 41.3 % allopathic, of participants believe that their patients approach R/S or TCAM practitioners for severe mental illness; 91.2 % of TCAM and 69.7 % of allopaths were satisfied with R/S healers (p = 0.0019). Furthermore, 91.1 % TCAM and 73.1 % allopaths (p = 0.000) believe that mental health stigma can be minimized by integrating with spiritual care services. Overall, 87 % of TCAM and 73 % of allopaths agreed to primary criterion variable: 'spiritual healing is beneficial and complementary to psychiatric care.' A quarter of allopaths (24.4 %) and 38 % of TCAM physicians reportedly cross-refer their grieving patients to religious/TCAM healer and psychiatrist/psychologist, respectively; on logistic regression, significant (p < 0.05) predictors were clinical interactions/references to r/s healers. Providing spiritual care within the setup of psychiatric institution will not only complement psychiatric care but also alleviate stigma against mental health services. Implications on developing spiritual care services like clinical chaplaincy are discussed.

The NERSH International Collaboration on Values, Spirituality and Religion in Medicine: Development of Questionnaire, Description of Data Pool, and Overview of Pool Publications

“…International research teams translated the RSMPP using mainly forward-backward translations with Face Validations in the following years [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…Only 11% of allopaths and 40% of TCAMs had received training in R/S, however 82% of TCAM and 63% of allopaths considered integration of spirituality an important element of the health care system. The sixth article from 2014 was based on the same dataset and focused on "Indian health care professionals' attitude towards spiritual healing and its role in alleviating stigma of psychiatric services" [16]. It gauged TCAM and allopathic practitioners' perspectives on patients' R/S needs in mental health services.…”

“…This article describes the development, contents, and first cross national comparisons based on an international research tool, first developed in 2002 and executed in 2003 with subsequent publications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], translated into seven languages [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] and optimized in 2013. The data document the impact of Health Professionals' (HPs') religious and secular beliefs and values on the clinical encounter.…”

The International NERSH Data Pool—A Methodological Description of a Data Pool of Religious and Spiritual Values of Health Professionals from Six Continents

“…Samples from Indonesia and India were collected in a joint collaboration under a single study. The Indonesian sample by Karimah was finished in 2010 (single facility, Dr. Soetomo General Hospital, Surabaya, East Java, all physicians) [15], and the Indian sample was collected from 2010 to 2012 by Ramakrishnan (multiple facilities, mixed HPs) [14,15,17]. The Danish version was translated in 2009 and data were collected in the years 2011-2012 (Region of Southern Denmark, all physicians) (not published yet).…”

“…Since its development, the RSMPP was translated into seven languages and research teams from around the world published their national findings in the following decade [6,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Most research teams added and subtracted items to study needs.…”