By Rev. Ken
Blank and Dr. John Campbell – Oklahoma Health Center Clinical Pastoral
Education Institute, Inc. Ó 2005
In the April, 2004, issue of Science and Theology
News, Julia Keller writes about several studies of the relationship
between disability and a sense of health.
Excerpted from Ms. Keller’s article: A psychology
researcher, Kieren Faull, at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in New Zealand,
interviewed thirty people with musculoskeletal disorders rendering them
“disabled” and found two primary themes among their responses to his question “What
is health for you?”. The first response was “strength of identity”
and the second was “interaction and connection”. Faull stressed that the
participants felt that they had achieved health despite their
disability but rather because of their disability. In other
words, they had achieved identity and connection through their disability and
this, in turn, made them “healthy” in their own assessment.
Faull drew on these findings to go from purely material,
i.e. physical, definitions of humanity to expand the definition to
include the immaterial, i.e. spiritual, aspects of humanity.
Faull explained that “spirituality is a sense of connection and relationship
that has as its premise a realm of existence that is nonmaterial – that is
spiritual – from which comes the essence of what a person is”. Spirituality
leads to a sense of self-identity, which is essential for health,
especially for people with disabilities, he concluded.
Ms. Keller wrote that the World Health Organization
(WHO) definition of health as not only the absence of infirmity or
disease but also a state of physical, mental, and social well-being,
may have to be reconsidered as it may be a poor definition for people who are
physically disabled.
Faull adds that he believes the hierarchy model of
human needs created by Abraham Maslow in the 1950’s may be up-side-down
in his view: “The first thing you have to do to be fully human is to get in
touch and transcend yourself” as you would in a spiritual experience
of life with or without disability.
Report and Commentary by Rev.
Ken Blank, M.Div., Executive Director, and Dr. John Campbell, PhD.,
Director of Research, Oklahoma Health Center Clinical Pastoral Education
Institute, Inc.Ó 2005
To let us know YOUR opinions on this topic: please
send responses to:
Mail: Chaplain Services,
VAMC #125, 921 N.E. 13th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73104 OR
Scan it and attach it to an email to us at mailto:survey@cpeokc.org.
Visit our website at http://www.cpeokc.org.