Spirituality’s Quiet Role in Recovery: New Study Finds “Centered Connectedness” Tied to Better Psychosomatic Outcomes — But Benefits Are Small and Complex
A large new clinical analysis suggests certain spiritual attitudes — especially a stable sense of inner calm and feeling connected to something larger than the self — are linked with modest improvements in psychosomatic symptoms and treatment outcomes, but the overall effect of spirituality on mental health is small and conditional. Researchers analysing thousands of psychosomatic inpatients found that items describing an “inner place of deep stillness and confidence,” trust in life, and feeling part of a larger whole correlated with lower depression scores and greater global improvement at discharge; by contrast, purely doctrinal or transcendent religious beliefs showed little or no beneficial association. The findings, published as part of a multi-year inpatient dataset, add to a growing but mixed international literature that urges careful, culturally sensitive integration of spiritual care into psychiatric and psychosomatic practice rather than simplistic prescriptions that spirituality alone will heal mental illness study data and analysis available here.