Health, Spirituality and Medical Ethics

Background and Objectives: Cancer as a frightening disease may affect people's confidence in their abilities, sense of controlling over their lives, and in other words self-esteem. Spiritual health as the main aspect of health can be an important source for calmness, decrease in existential distress, improvement of self-esteem and coping with the disease. This study was conducted to investigate the correlation between spiritual health and self-esteem in Iranian cancer patients.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was accomplished by obtaining Rosenberg Self-Esteem and Paloutzian & Ellison scales questionnaire from a  convenience sample of 170 cancer patients who were referred for chemotherapy to hospitals of SEMNAN University of Medical Sciences. Data were analyzed by SPSS using one-way analysis of variance and Pearson correlation, and level of significance (P) was considered <0.05.

Results: Study group has shown a mean self-esteem score of 18.5±3.5 and 98.1±13.2 for spiritual well- being. There was a direct correlation between spiritual health and self- esteem after adjustment for sex, age, education level and marital status (r=0.55).

Conclusion: This study demonstrated that spiritual health was significantly associated with self-esteem in cancer patients. Considering critical conditions of cancer patients and their urgent need for maintaining and improving spiritual well-being, enhancement of spiritual health and self-esteem should be further emphasized in the treatment programs of these patients such that they and their families that represent a large population can be assisted to overcome the critical conditions.