Health Promotion - Spiritual Healing

Book preview This book starts from the discourse on the promotion of health in contemporary British society and in particular, the more inclusive approach of recent years which has involved previously relatively excluded groups like the disabled, Black and other minority ethnic people in the planning and delivery of health and social care services. Since 1997 under the Labour Government, this inclusive approach has led to a new open-ness to faith based initiatives. The spiritual domain, however, has been given little importance among the five approaches presented in the dominant Ewles and Simnett (1999) model for the promotion of health. This model was used by the present writer and other colleagues to deliver health promotion courses to nurses and other health and social care professionals over several years, but seemed increasingly to place little importance on the role of spirituality in health promotion. Her own African-Caribbean culture cultural heritage also appeared as an important omission. To remedy these gaps in the discourse of health promotion, looking at a white majority culture as well as Afro-Caribbean culture, it was decided to use an ethnographic approach. Two specific congregations were chosen for the investigation, one belonging to the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and one to the United Reform Church (URC). The research method set out to interrogate the perceptions of church attendees, through semi-structured interviews, and through participant and non-participant observation. Since I was bringing much of my own experience to the work, I realised it was necessary to be rigorous in applying autobiographical method as emphasised most recently by Muncey (2010) . I have therefore used my life experiences as evidence, and in discerning and shaping the formulation of the hypotheses. Included in the text is an illustration of the personal journey to the beginning of research, contextualising what follows. The journeys through the data collection and the writing of the thesis have had a profound effect on my view of the world, both spiritual and academic. I am not, however, using my own experience as my primary data as Muncey's (2010) autobiographical approach to auto-ethnography suggests, as it was important for me to try step outside my own world in order to create a distance from the data during the collection process as well as during the writing up phase. Although I share the common bond of socio-cultural and spiritual identity with the research topic and the respondents, the methodology chosen is not dependent on autobiography. I also share the ambivalence towards biographical enterprise as scientific method in itself as expressed by McAdams and West (1997). The methodological principles of auto-ethnography guide, it is to be hoped, my critical reflection throughout the process (c.f. Spry 2001). The methodological approach of observation, interview and reflexivity is one with which I am familiar since as I have used it throughout my professional life. It seemed appropriate to build on a familiar methodology in the same way that my personal, professional and academic skills have been developed throughout the process of producing this thesis. The following ideas guided the questions for the respondents who participated in the interviews: a) Spiritual healing may be perceived by church-attending actors in illness and health behaviour as a strong factor in the success of delivering health b) People's compliance with formal and informal health programmes are closely related to their belief systems. The discussion of themes elicited from the data is given in chapters which are included in this book and are summarized in the final chapter as a conclusion.