Hope and its Relationship to Spiritual Well-Being

Abstract

Hope is essential to physical and psychosocial well-being and plays a central role in one's ability to deal with illness and suffering. It's relationship to spiritual well-being, however, has not been explored empirically. This article addresses the conceptual similarities of hope and spiritual well-being and reports the results of a correlational study examining the relationship in a sample of healthy individuals. While hope was found to be related to both the religious and existential dimensions of spiritual well-being, the relationship with existential well-being was significantly stronger. Questions are raised concerning the developmental relationship of hope and spiritual well-being, and the importance of spiritual well-being in facilitating hope in others is addressed.