Existential health
– developing and evaluating methods for successful
health promotion in a secularized context
22nd WORLD CONFERENCE ON HEALTH PROMOTION Curitiba, Brazil 22-26 May, 2016 Abstract nr. 7683
Cecilia Melder, TD, Assistant Professor Uppsala University,
Department of Religious Studies/ Psychology of Religion
BOX 256
SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden E-mail: cecilia.melder@teol.uu.se Phone/mobil: +46 (0)70-4960706
Catrine Kostenius, Associate Professor Luleå University of Technology,
Department of Health Sciences, SE-971 87 Luleå, Sweden
E-mail: catkos@ltu.se Phone: +46 (0)920-493288 Mobile: +46 (0)70-200046 Australia Oceania Asia Africa Europe Middle East North America South America C. America/ Caribbean
1. The world
Research on health-related quality of life has the last few decades emphasized the im-portance to recognize and assess a client’s existential health status, sometimes re-ferred to as spiritual health, for high quality care. How-ever, in what way health and health care is affected bychanges in the culture has drawn little attention.
Ac-cording to the World Values Survey there are countries where traditional arenas for existential meaning-making have decreased importance in peoples everyday life.
2. A Swedish model
To meet the health literacy needs in these countries a model for existen-tial health promotion was developed and tested in a clinical setting in Sweden, one of the world’s most secularized countries. This existential health promotion model, presented in Melder’s doctoral thesis,
com-bining theory of
psy-chology of religion and health promotion, pro-vides a fundament to understand the relation-ship between different dimensions of health, such as the physical, mental, social and exis-tential. It also includes suggestions on how the existential dimension
can be enhanced to
promote health-related quality of life.
Continuum between the dimensions
integration and disintegration (Melder, 2011)
3. Physical health dimension
1. Dimension with external existentially meaningful impact
2. Dimension with inner existential needs
5. Social health dimension 4. Mental health dimension
The core of the middle= Potential existential meaning-making health dimension Meaning & Purpose In Life Spiritual Connection Experiences of Awe & Wonder Faith Hope & Optimism Existential health dimension Inner Peace Spiritual Strength Wholeness & Integration
3. Eight existential aspects
-Spirituality, Religiousness and Personal Beliefs
The model addresses eight different aspects of the existential dimension; spiritual connection, meaning and purpose in life, experience of awe and wonder, wholeness and integration, spiritual strength, inner peace, hope and optimism, as well as faith. These aspects were chosen inspired by the existential items in the trans-cultural survey [WHOQOL-SRPB] meas-uring health-related quality of life developed by the World Health Organ-ization (WHO) after a pilot study in 2002. Brazil was one of the 18 differ-ent countries’ that took part in the pilot study.
4. Promoting existential health
Based on this existential health promotion model two interventions
were formed. One was used to enhance patient’s self-care capabilities in self-help groups and the other was used as a complement to exist-ing health care interventions for suicide prevention and treatment for persons on long time sick leave. The above mentioned WHO survey was used to evaluate these health promotion interventions in three dif-ferent clinical settings. The participants answered the questions “be-fore and after” the existential health promotion intervention to meas-ure health-related quality of life.
The results were promising, which make us conclude that this model can be used to promote health literacy in the area of existential health, especially when planning interventions for successful health
promo-tion in a secularized context.
World Value Survey Cultural map - WVS wave 6
(2010-2014) (www http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ WVSContents.jsp)
Eight aspects of the existential health dimension inspired by WHO
