Spirituality and spiritual distress in neurologic illness

Neurologic illnesses present multiple challenges to patients and their families from the time of initial diagnosis and throughout their illness trajectory, including challenges related to accepting the diagnosis and its various impacts and anxiety about future living with their illness. Often patients and their families rely on their spirituality to cope with and to maintain meaning and dignity in the midst of disease. As a result, spiritual care provision is a critical component of holistic medical care to patients with neurologic illness. Spiritual care provision follows a generalist-specialist model, which requires all healthcare professionals involved in the care of patients facing serious illness to play a role in recognizing and addressing spiritual needs. This model is characterized by generalist spiritual care providers (e.g., nurses, physicians, social workers) who perform spiritual screenings through history taking. Chaplains function as specialist spiritual care providers and can address spiritual care more deeply. In addition, several developed psychotherapeutic approaches may be useful for patients with neurologic disease, and chaplains are especially trained to offer supportive spiritual care to patients with neurologic illnesses and their families and to work together with physicians and other members of the healthcare team as part of a holistic approach to care.