Spiritual Coping and Anxiety in Palliative Care Patients: A Pilot Study

Patients often rely on spirituality to cope with anxiety, yet it is not known if spiritual coping actually helps patients deal with anxiety. The present study was designed, therefore, to examine this relationship. A series of patients who were referred to the palliative care team at New York University, Langone Medical Center (N = 44) were interviewed about their spiritual coping and anxiety. Anxiety was measured using the first three items of the GAD-7. Fourteen items, which were adapted from existing scales, were used to create the ''Beliefs and Activities Spirituality Scale'' (BASS), having two subscales: Activities (alpha=.79) and Beliefs (alpha=.82). Anxiety had a significant negative correlations with the total BASS (r = -.56), and the Activities (r = -.52) and Beliefs (r = -.42) subscales. The salubrious association of spiritual coping and anxiety remained for the BASS and the Activities subscale, after controlling for demographic variables.