Page 72 - South Mississippi Living - November, 2025

HEALTHY LIVING
Spirituality
Spirituality, faith, and religion are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings. Spirituality is sometimes misunderstood because of its close ties to religion. Research shows that faith and spirituality can significantly impact how you cope with life’s challenges, such as illness and other crises, helping to improve your overall well-being. Spirituality can provide you with a system of meaning to understand your experiences
and find effective coping strategies.
Understanding spirituality is essential for grasping health, wellness, and quality of life principles. Many healthcare facilities now recognize
the importance of offering spiritual care as part of their services. There’s
a growing movement to integrate this type of care into the healthcare system,
highlighting the connection between spirituality and positive aging. For over 20 years, spirituality has been an important theme in fields like psychiatry, medicine, and nursing.
At its core, spirituality is about your relationship with something greater than yourself. It encompasses a broad range of beliefs and includes an ethical aspect. Spiritual pain can affect you in the present and diminish your hope for the future. As you approach the later life stages, you may reflect on the passing of time. However, finding value in everyday life can be a strong
coping mechanism for addressing spiritual pain. Even a limited lifespan can bring about positive experiences.
In late adulthood, facing multiple health issues, life-threatening conditions, and the realization of your mortality can lead to the loss of connections with loved ones, which may cause spiritual distress. Having a positive, faith-based perspective can affect your overall well-being both mentally and physically. Spirituality includes various viewpoints, like psychological, transpersonal, and religious perspectives, and is expressed in many cultural traditions. Your spiritual life significantly influences your well- being and mental stability.
The support you receive from your environment, and the understanding and acceptance from family, friends, and healthcare providers, are vital to how you perceive your quality of life. If your spiritual life is essential to you, you are likely to cope better with illness. Recognizing your perspective and values is vital in the overall therapeutic process.
72 | November 2025
www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living
and Your Health
story by Dr. Nickie Harris-Ray