Can Cognitive Science Rescue ‘Spiritual Care’ from a Metaphysical Backwater?

KEVERN, Peter (2013) Can Cognitive Science Rescue ‘Spiritual Care’ from a Metaphysical Backwater? Journal for the Study of Spirituality, 3 (1). pp. 8-17. ISSN 2044-0243

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Abstract or description

'Spiritual care' has a valued but precarious place in contemporary UK health care. Although the term is widely used, it only attracts significant attention and resources related to care at the end of life; elsewhere, spiritual care is often under-resourced and perfunctory. The author argues that a major reason for this is that proponents of spiritual care have so far failed to speak a language comprehensible to reductionist, evidence-based practitioners and health managers. He proposes that current developments in the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion have the potential to provide such a language, and to refocus a subject that has been muddled by conceptual vagueness and the multiplication of assessment tools. As a result, attention to spirituality could be liberated from its current ghetto in palliative and long-term care and become more firmly embedded and integrated into everyday nursing practice.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty:	Previous Faculty of Health Sciences > Social Work, Allied and Public Health
Depositing User:	Peter KEVERN
Date Deposited:	20 Sep 2013 16:29
Last Modified:	24 Feb 2023 13:40
URI:	https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/id/eprint/1577

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