Reclaiming ritual in palliative care: A hermeneutic narrative review.
Chrystabel Butler, Natasha Michael, David Kissane
Palliative & Supportive Care January 27, 2025 DOI: 10.1017/S1478951524001767 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Narrative review Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | End-of-life distress |
| Keywords | Spiritual care End of life Hospice Palliative care Ritualization Spirituality |
| Citations | 6 |
| Key findings | Ritual, understood through its evolutionary and physical mechanisms, can provide an embodied spiritual resource that meets the fundamental spiritual need for embodied experience in secular palliative care settings. |
Abstract
To explore the potential of incorporating personally meaningful rituals as a spiritual resource for Western secular palliative care settings. Spiritual care is recognized as critical to palliative care; however, comprehensive interventions are lacking. In postmodern societies, the decline of organized religion has left many people identifying as "no religion" or "spiritual but not religious." To assess if ritual could provide appropriate and ethical spiritual care for this growing demographic requires comprehensive understanding of the spiritual state and needs of the secular individual in postmodern society, as well as a theoretical understanding of the elements and mechanisms of ritual. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and theoretically informed exploration of these elements through a critical engagement with heterogeneous literatures. A hermeneutic narrative review, inspired by complexity theory, underpinned by a view of understanding of spiritual needs as a complex mind-body phenomenon embedded in sociohistorical context. This narrative review highlights a fundamental spiritual need in postmodern post-Christian secularism as need for embodied spiritual experience. The historical attrition of ritual in Western culture parallels loss of embodied spiritual experience. Ritual as a mind-body practice can provide an embodied spiritual resource. The origin of ritual is identified as evolutionary adaptive ritualized behaviors universally observed in animals and humans which develop emotional regulation and conceptual cognition. Innate human behaviors of creativity, play, and communication develop ritual. Mechanisms of ritual allow for connection to others as well as to the sacred and transcendent. Natural and innate behaviors of humans can be used to create rituals for personally meaningful spiritual resources. Understanding the physical properties and mechanisms of ritual making allows anyone to build their own spiritual resources without need of relying on experts or institutionalized programs. This can provide a self-empowering, client-centered intervention for spiritual care.
Comparable studies
Other narrative reviews on end-of-life distress, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy in the Context of Serious Illness. Palliative care clinicians and patients | 2022 | Review | |
| The Potential of Psychedelics for End of Life and Palliative Care. Patients with life-threatening diagnoses | 2022 | Review | |
| Psilocybin in Palliative Care: An Update. Palliative care patients | 2023 | Review | |
| Psychedelic medicines for end-of-life care: Pipeline clinical trial review 2022. People with terminal illnesses experiencing depression, anxiety, or existential distress | 2023 | Scoping review | n = 25 |
| Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for existential distress: practical considerations for therapeutic application—a review | 2024 | Narrative review |
Citations in the library
Cites 4
- From cognitivism to autopoiesis: towards a computational framework for the embodied mind. Synthese 2018
- Mind and material engagement. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2019
- Rhythmic Chanting and Mystical States across Traditions. Brain Sciences January 13, 2021
- Imaginal architectural devices and the ritual space of medieval necromancy. Endeavour December 1, 2020