Spiritual Care (3)
Spiritual care is an essential component of palliative care as defined by the World Health Organisation. “Spirituality” although it may include religion is a broader concept that is concerned with man’s quest to find purpose and ascribe meaning to his existence.
Children are spiritual beings and spiritual care is an important part of the healing that needs to take place in the lives of children suffering from life threatening and life limiting illnesses.
This section contains resources that may help with spiritual assessment and care for the child and his/her family in the South African context.
Religion and religious customs varies widely in South Africa. About 80% of the population follows Christian religion, mostly protestant. There are a number of South African Christian churches and nearly 85% of the people are members of the church. The largest single church is the Zion Christian Church, which has over 4 million followers.
What follows is an alphabetical list of the most common religions and their various death rituals. Source for this information: www.beliefnet.com
There is much controversy as to how to define spirituality. The dictionary defines it as "relating to or affecting the human spirit" and defines the human spirit as the "non-physical part of a person which is regarded as the seat of emotions and character."Some people like to think of spirituality as 'the quest for meaning in life.'Spirituality differs from religion, which can be defined as "the belief and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."While spirituality lies at the heart of most religions, non-religious people can also be spiritual and everyone has spiritual needs.
