Relationship of Hardiness Components to General Health, Spiritual Health, and Burnout: The Path Analysis

Abstract

Objective: Acknowledging the key role of hardiness, importance of health and its various dimensions, the present study aimed to investigate the simultaneous relationship between hardiness components and spiritual health, burnout, and general health, among Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences staff.
 Method: 307 Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences’ staff in Tehran with at least five years work experience participated in this cross-sectional study using simple random sampling. Four questionnaires were used to evaluate the participants: the 28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) to assess general mental problems with four subscales, 22-item Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) with two aspects (frequency and intensity) and three subscales of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment, the 20-item Spiritual Well Being Scale (SWBS) Questionnaire with two subscales of religious well-being and existential well-being and the 50-item Kobasa Hardiness Questionnaire to measure psychological hardiness with three subscales of control, commitment and challenge. At the end, two conceptual models which have shown effect of hardiness and its subscales on general health, Spiritual health and burnout were evaluated by path analysis.
 Results: According to the path analysis results, it was found that hardiness and its subscales, which were approved by univariable and multivariable analyses, had significant relationship with general health (direct effect: -0.525, P < 0.001), spiritual health (direct effect: 0.555, P < 0.001) and burnout (direct effect of frequency aspect: -0.523, P < 0.001). Thus, by increasing hardiness and its subscales, spiritual health increases while symptoms of illness and burnout decrease.
 Conclusion: Spiritual health increases as hardiness and its subscales increase as well; therefore, symptoms of illness and burnout decrease as hardiness and its subscales increase.

The Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS) as an Indicator of General Well-Being

“…In a recent survey, Levin [51] collected data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey from 1714 participants to investigate the prevalence and religious predictors of healing prayer use among US adults. Interestingly, results show that over 75% of adult Americans have prayed for the healing of others and over half have participated in prayer groups [50]. In support of these findings, Pew Research Center [52] gathered data that suggested over 90% of Americans believe in a Higher Power, and over half pray daily, many times for their own and others' healing.…”

“…Research by Hosseini et al [50] incorporated the SWBS to address relationships between psychological hardiness and general/spiritual health and burnout among 312 medical science staff participants. Findings demonstrated that the hardiness variable had a highly significant relationship with spiritual health, meaning that increases in one were associated with increases in the other.…”