Spirituality and Adaptive Coping Styles in German Patients with Chronic Diseases in a CAM Health Care Setting

For several reasons one may suggest a connection between spirituality and religiosity (SpR) and the usage of CAM. It is suggested that patients with severe diseases which use CAM have more active coping strategies and a higher religious involvement than patients which do not use these treatments. We thus investigated basic attitudes of 313 patients with chronic diseases attending a CAM outpatient clinic towards SpR and their adjustment to their illness, and relevant adaptive coping strategies. All test instruments were extensively (re)validated before usage, particularly the AKU questionnaire which measures adaptive coping styles. The main important strategies were “Search for information and medical help” and “Positive arrangement of life,” while “Religious support” and “Positive interpretation of illness” were less important. Among those with an interest in SpR, "Support of life through SpR" was highly relevant. "Search for alternative ways of healing" did not correlate with any of the SpR scales, but strongly with "Search for information and medical help" and "Positive arrangement of life." We conclude that interest in CAM is not a unique pattern of SpR, but of an adaptive and active coping. Nevertheless, we confirm SpR is of high importance in patients with life-threatening diseases such as cancer.