Design Thinking Paradigm

For this week’s assignment, we have to review an article and analyze it by using the Design Thinking paradigm. I decided to use this article “Healing from Within: Spirituality and Mental Health”. It is very appropriate for me as I have always been fascinated by the effect of spirituality on our physical wellbeing and will be the topic for my final paper.

The author explores how an awareness of spirituality can be helpful in the work of the professional staff and care workers of the health industry. The benefits from spirituality includes help to prevent many physical and mental illnesses, reduce the severity of symptoms, enhance recovery and increase the endurance factor. He mentions that spiritual awareness can add a powerful and much-needed dimension whenever we have reached our limits. The spiritual approach fosters a positive attitude even in the most agonizing situations. It fosters calm in the place of anxiety and hope in the place of despair.

The article states clearly the need to include spiritual support to provide a more comprehensive care for the patients. The author describes that grief, bewilderment, fear, guilt, anger and other painful feelings can gradually be overcome or healed by spirituality. When one of my friends was suffering from pancreatic cancer, his family and close friends experienced all these strong and negative emotions. The pain was excruciating to him and we could only watch helplessly. Spirituality provided some comfort and was the bond that kept us in solidarity to be there to show our love. I have discovered more studies regarding spirituality and health, as well as interesting videos from UCSF’s Mini Medical School for the Public by Dr Kevin Barrows and Dr Michael Rabow.

The author explains that spiritual assessment of the patient should be included in order to understand his spirituality state. The article consists of clear guidelines, including the opening questions to start the discussion. The author explains that the staff will have to be trained to provide spiritual support. He encourages to recruit further assistance from patient’s family or friends to provide more information and support. It is also necessary to provide the space for this form of interaction with the involvement from local religious communities.

The article does not show any supporting evidence but states that further qualitative and quantitative research need to be done. It concludes that since the most important matter is the wellbeing of patients, so spiritual care must be incorporated.

The spiritual care needs to be genuine that comes from the giver’s heart. This will require the giver to feel love and compassion first. The giver must possess virtue or good character in order to be able to develop such feelings. The decision to hire professional staff will become more complicating as now their characters will be taken into account.

I like how the author explains the reciprocity principle of spiritual care, whereby giver and receiver both benefit from their interaction. The professional staff and carers are often stressed, suffering from high marital breakdown, drug dependency, alcoholism, depression and suicide. Subsequently the learning of spirituality will benefit themselves while developing the skill to provide spiritual care for the patients.

This article is very helpful for writing my final paper since I will be writing about the effects of spirituality on health. It has shown me that spirituality can even work in negative ways that may disrupt the treatment of the patient, for instance the practise of fasting and refusing medication. This is another aspect that I have not considered before. This gets me thinking, will there be more positive and negative effects of spirituality on our wellbeing? What do you think?


Wish you all happiness and health till next post!
 

Bibliography
Dr. Larry Culliford (2005). Healing from Within: Spirituality and Mental Health. Retrieved November 20, 2013, from http://www.miepvideos.org/Healing%20From%20within.pdf