Spiritual Beliefs Add To the Perceived Health of Cancer Patients

The study aimed to examine the impacts of spiritual beliefs of diagnosed cancer patients and normal healthy participants on their perceived health. The present research employed a correlational research design to collect and analyze data. The purposive sampling method was used to select the participants in the study. Sixty diagnosed male (M = 52.32, SD = 10.52) and female (M = 51.68, SD = 6.90) cancer patients and 60 normal healthy male (M = 44.00, SD = 10.45) and female (M = 47.15, SD = 11.32) participants constituted the samples for the study. The findings of the study evinced that spiritual beliefs had important role in shaping the nature and extent of the perceived health of the cancer patients and normal healthy participants. The gender has also been observed to play pivotal role in impacting the perceived health of the participants. It was also observed that spiritual beliefs had shown positive correlations with the scores of perceived health of the male, female and all the cancer patients and normal healthy participants. An important finding of the study denoted that spiritual beliefs contributed significantly and even higher in degree to the scores of the perceived health of the participants inflicted with cancer as compared to the participants with no known history of chronic diseases. In essence, the findings of the study corroborated the important role of spiritual beliefs in determining the perceived health of the participants suffering from fatal disease like cancer. The findings of the study have significant implications in understanding the spiritual beliefs and perceived health of the patients inflicted with fatal diseases and it will benefit equally health professional, care-givers and public at large. The limitations and future directions for future researchers have been discussed at the end.