Spiritual and Non-spiritual Needs Among German Soldiers and Their Relation to Stress Perception, PTDS Symptoms, and Life Satisfaction: Results from a Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

In an anonym cross-sectional survey (using standardized questionnaires) among 1092 German soldiers, we found that 21 % regard their faith as a "strong hold in difficult times." Only a few had specific religious needs. Rather, a consistent theme from the participants was the need to communicate their own fears, worries and desire to attain states of inner peace. "Soldiers" stress perception and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms were associated particularly with existential and Inner Peace Needs. Structural equation modeling indicated that stress perception has a negative influence on soldiers' life satisfaction, which in turn gives rise to specific unmet spiritual needs. These specific needs may indicate psycho-emotional problems which could be supported very early to prevent health affections and service failure.

Spiritual Needs of PTSD Patients in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina: A Quantitative Pilot Study

“…Veterans scored Inner Peace Needs highest, followed by Social Support and Giving/Generativity Needs. These findings are similar to those of a similar study conducted with German soldiers which also found that Inner Peace Needs and "relational" needs were considered most important (Büssing & Recchia 2016). Looking at the single item responses for Inner Peace Needs, the need to "dwell in a quiet and peaceful place" was scored highest in both groups, with nearly all participants indicating a strong need.…”

“…According to the Croatian Institute for Public Health (2014), 10,137 Croatian men between the ages 50-64 and 19,186 between the ages 30-49 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Croatian Institute of Public Health 2014). Because the number of PTSD cases is much higher in the male population, it is assumed that most of these cases are war-related.…”

Factor Structure of the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire (SpNQ) in Persons with Chronic Diseases, Elderly and Healthy Individuals

“…In line with this finding, Existential Needs and Inner Peace Needs of German soldiers were moderately correlated with perceptions of stress (PSS) and with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PCL-M), while Religious Needs and Giving/Generativity Needs were marginally to weakly related to these mental health indicators (Büssing and Recchia 2016). Furthermore, among elderly persons living in retirement homes, Existential Needs were moderately related to tiredness (ASTS) and Inner Peace Needs with grief and tiredness, while Religious Needs and Giving/Generativity Needs were weakly associated with emotional tiredness (Erichsen and Büssing 2013).…”

“…To test the instrument's factorial structure, we relied on existing datasets that involved both ill and healthy persons from Germany (Table 1), i.e., 448 patients with chronic pain diseases, 116 persons with cancer, and 63 persons psychiatric/neurological diseases (Büssing et al 2013b;Offenbaecher et al 2013), 1033 adults (Büssing and Recchia 2016), 125 mothers with sick newborns , and 313 elderly persons (Erichsen and Büssing 2013;Man-Ging et al 2015;Mayr et al unpublished). All groups differed significantly with respect to gender and age (p < 0.0001; χ 2 ).…”

Measuring Spirituality and Religiosity in Clinical Settings: A Scoping Review of Available Instruments

“…Second, we searched databases associated with clinical and medical research data and thus missed relevant journals whose main focus are religion and spirituality. Here, for example we located two studies investigating the use of the BENEFIT scale and SpNQ, however, several further articles (Büssing and Recchia 2016;Büssing and Koenig 2010;Büssing et al 2013c) were published in journals not cited by PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO. Additionally, several measures although not used in clinical settings were evaluated in samples such as stressed soldiers, mothers of sick children and elderly people in care homes whose data would have benefited our review (Büssing and Recchia 2016;Erichsen and Büssing 2013;Büssing et al 2017).…”