“Research shows that spirituality may help some patients cope with illness, yet few studies have looked at its effects on quality of life among stroke survivors and their long-term care partners,” Gianluca Pucciarelli, Ph.D., FAHA, the lead study author, explains of the motivation for the research. Over the course of two years, his team asked the cohort questions about their spirituality and mental health and quality of life and tracked the associations between them. “In summary, when care partners feel depressed, something that is common for stroke caregivers, the survivor’s spirituality made the difference in whether this was associated with better or worse quality of life. This demonstrates the important protective role of spirituality in illness and why we must study it more,” Pucciarelli writes of these findings. And when the survivor’s spirituality was reported as below average? So was the quality of life for both them and their caregivers. And you don’t need to consider yourself religious to have a rich spiritual life (but if you do, that’s great, too). Regardless of what spirituality looks like to you, believing in something bigger than yourself seems to help improve quality of life in more ways than one.
