Article
Details
Citation
Mills PJ, Redwine L, Wilson K, Pung MA, Chinh K, Greenberg BH, Lunde O, Maisel A, Raisinghani A, Wood AM & Chopra D (2015) The role of gratitude in spiritual wellbeing in asymptomatic heart failure patients. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2 (1), pp. 5-17. https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000050
Abstract
Spirituality and gratitude are associated with well-being. Few if any studies have examined the role of gratitude in heart failure (HF) patients or whether it is a mechanism through which spirituality may exert its beneficial effects on physical and mental health in this clinical population. This study examined associations between gratitude, spiritual well-being, sleep, mood, fatigue, cardiac-specific self-efficacy, and inflammation in 186 men and women with Stage B asymptomatic HF (age 66.5 years ± 10). In correlational analysis, gratitude was associated with better sleep (r = ?.25, p < .01), less depressed mood (r = ?.41, p < .01), less fatigue (r = ?.46, p < .01), and better self-efficacy to maintain cardiac function (r = .42, p < .01). Patients expressing more gratitude also had lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers (r = ?.17, p < .05). We further explored relationships among these variables by examining a putative pathway to determine whether spirituality exerts its beneficial effects through gratitude. We found that gratitude fully mediated the relationship between spiritual well-being and sleep quality (z = ?2.35, SE = .03, p = .02) and also the relationship between spiritual well-being and depressed mood (z = ?4.00, SE = .075, p < .001). Gratitude also partially mediated the relationships between spiritual well-being and fatigue (z = ?3.85, SE = .18, p < .001) and between spiritual well-being and self-efficacy (z = 2.91, SE = .04, p = .003). In sum, we report that gratitude and spiritual well-being are related to better mood and sleep, less fatigue, and more self-efficacy, and that gratitude fully or partially mediates the beneficial effects of spiritual well-being on these endpoints. Efforts to increase gratitude may be a treatment for improving well-being in HF patients’ lives and be of potential clinical value.
Keywords
heart failure; gratitude; spiritual well-being; inflammation
Journal
Spirituality in Clinical Practice: Volume 2, Issue 1
Status | Published |
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Publication date | 31/03/2015 |
Date accepted by journal | 19/01/2015 |
Publisher | American Psychological Association |
ISSN | 2326-4500 |
eISSN | 2326-4519 |