Medical Mysticism: An Investigation into the Factors: Religion, Spirituality and Health that Need to be Considered

Spirituality and religion have been seen as beneficial, harmful, and irrelevant to health. An effort was made to examine the recent research on this topic. The focus was on: defining spirituality and religion both conceptually and operationally. The rapidly accumulating evidence on spirituality further confirmed that personal spirituality has important influences on healthcare outcomes however it is difficult to integrate into daily medical practice. However medical spirituality was studied as a distinct interdisciplinary with its own well-developed body of clinical evidence, clinical skill and with well-defined clinical boundaries. An effort was made to integrate the new knowledge, and help anticipate developing "turf issues."