Spirituality and distress in sheltered battered women

Purpose: To examine the relationship between spiritual beliefs and psycholo gical distress in sheltered battered women. Design: A convenience sample of 50 ethnically diverse women who had resided for at least 21 days in battered women's shelters participated Data were o btained over a 7-month period in 1998 and 1999. Methods: Participants completed the Spiritual Perspective Scale (SPS), Symp tom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90), Conflict Tactics Scale, and a demographi c data sheet. Results: These sheltered battered women placed high value on their spiritua l beliefs and used a variety of spiritual practices to aid them. The relati onship between the Global Severity Index as measured by the SCL-90 and SPS scores approached statistical significance (r = -.27, p = .06). However, a significant inverse relationship was found between the SPS score and the ob sessive-compulsive score (r = -.34, p < .05), interpersonal sensitivity sco re (r = -.32, p < .05), and hostility dimensions score (r = -.37, p < .01) of the SCL-90. Conclusions: The findings indicated that, among these sheltered battered wo men, spirituality may be associated with greater internal resources that bu ffer distressing feelings and calm the mind. This study shows support of sp irituality as a means of reducing distress through greater connection to on eself and higher Powers.