Abstract

TONIOL, Rodrigo. Spirituality that is good: research, public policy and clinical practice for the promotion of spirituality as health. Soc. relig. [online]. 2015, vol.25, n.43, pp.110-146. ISSN 1853-7081.

In this article I analyze the production of spirituality as a dimension of human health within the medical sciences, public health policies and clinical practice. I analyze the interest of medical science in spirituality, or in some of the ways in which spirituality has been recognized by researchers and practitioners that respond to an agenda of research and concern with maintaining human health. For this, I first show the intensified use of the concept of spirituality in medical sciences since the 1970s. Subsequently, I try to show how the terms spirituality and holism have been used as principles of justification for a National Policy on Integrative and Complementary Practices, which provides the incorporation of alternative therapies into Brazil's public health system. In the final part, I explore the emergence of specialists in the organization of spirituality as one of the consequences of this process that connects spirituality with an ideal of health.

Keywords : Spirituality; health; alternative therapies; medical sciences; SUS.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )