Can Spiritual Health be Quantified: A Simple Idea
by
Ajay Kumar Bansal
Delhi University College of Medical Sciences & GTB Hospital, Delhi-95
Coauthors: Dr S.D.Sharma, Professor of Operations Research, Deptt of Mathematics, Meerut College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

The complete health of a human being means the physical and mental health. The physical health is the health of various parts and organs of our body. The mental health comprises of the health of mind, emotions and spiritual health. Traditional medicine treats the body and hence improve the physical part of health status. The real wellness is achieved only when we have a balance among these components of health.

The physical health status can easily be measured in terms of Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, Temperature of the body, various Cell Counts, etc. etc.. But how to measure the spiritual health. A substantial number of studies have shown a direct relatioship between religious involvement and spirituality and positive health outcomes. Studies shows that spiritual practices have positive correlation with Survival, Low Blood Pressure, less remission time from depression, less number of cigrettes smoked per day/week, less severe medical illness, better quality of life, cooperativeness, lower IL-6 levels, etc.

In this study we have tried to put together few biochemical measurements, quality of life parametres and religious activity parametres to quantify the spiritual health to give a meaningful approach to its measurement which will inturn open a passage for application of various statistical and operational research techniques to propose different models and methods in improving this component of health.

Date received: August 21, 2003