Spiritual Health as an Integral Component of Human Wellbeing

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this study is to actualize personal spiritual health as a fundamental component of human wellbeing. In Lithuania research on spiritual health has not been developed yet as a result of political thinking in the post Soviet legacy which sought to eliminate the factor of spirituality from scientific context, and also due to recent socio-economic trends to over-emphasize the material dimension of personal welfare. Christian anthropology, which has laid foundations for Western European humanist heritage, emphasizes the physical and spiritual components of integrity of the human person and declares the importance of personal spiritual harmony for achievement of fullness of life. While employing analysis of scientific literature and Church documents, this study sought to highlight the basic criteria of personal spiritual health and scientific empirical approaches to establish the importance of spiritual health in the context of comprehensive human wellbeing. The study reveals that an essential component of the concept of spiritual health is relationship. Spiritual health is an important component of human wellbeing enabling the person to cope with personal existential crises in various aspects of human life: stressful situations, illness or presence of death. Research confirms that spiritual health correlates with and is an important positive factor in the overall process of human healing. It may be assumed that actualization and improvement of spiritual health can significantly contribute to the processes of coping with social pathologies present in the modern society.