IN HIS book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks tells his story of Jimmie G, the “Lost Mariner”. Jimmie, once a young naval officer, suffered with an unusual dementia. In chapel, however, he became wholly present, calm, and attentive: his humanity was restored. Faith appeared to anchor him when everything else slipped away.
This story captures something essential about spiritual health: even when the body or mind becomes frail or unwell, the spirit can still find meaning and connection. The SHARP (Spiritual Health Awareness and Recommendations in Primary Care) study, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, began with this conviction: that health and healing in UK primary care must take the whole person into account.
Across Europe, our review found that, while spiritual health strongly supported other aspects of health, support in primary care was patchy. In the Netherlands, spiritual care is integrated into the national health system, and trained spiritual-care professionals are available to patients regardless of faith background. In other countries, such as Denmark and Germany, GPs receive some training in how to explore questions of meaning and purpose in consultations.
In the UK, however, provision often depends on the enthusiasm of individual practitioners, or on locally funded initiatives. There is no consistent expectation about ways in which spiritual health needs are identified and signposted.
We concluded that future progress lay in community partnerships, building bridges between medicine and the wider community. GPs cannot do this work alone. Faith and non-faith communities, chaplaincy networks, and social-prescribing schemes already offer a wealth of pastoral experience and local knowledge. Bringing these together could create sustainable, asset-based approaches that respect “all faiths and none”.
SOCIAL prescribing already provides one of the strongest bridges between medicine and meaning. It connects patients with non-medical activities such as walking groups, art classes, volunteering, and faith-based projects. It invites the question not “What’s the matter with you?” but “What matters to you?” That simple change reframes health as a story of purpose and belonging, something that faith communities have always understood.
Social prescribers described already encountering spiritual concerns in conversation, and yet most have had no formal preparation for this. Patients often raise questions about loss, guilt, gratitude, or purpose. Without confidence or structure, these moments risk being overlooked or feared. Including spiritual health in the social-prescribing conversation would make care more honest and more humane.
Many health-care professionals, including GPs and social prescribers, already recognise the importance of spiritual health, and yet they often hesitate to ask about it. They fear overstepping, offending, or being misunderstood. Time pressures and lack of training add to the caution. A few expressed anxiety about being accused of proselytising if faith was mentioned at all. But, when clinicians do listen with respect, relationships deepen, trust grows, and both patient and practitioner are more satisfied.
To address this, we co-designed a short, practical course — the SHARP training — for whole-practice teams: doctors, managers, social prescribers, chaplains, parish nurses, and patients with lived experience. Each stage of development was tested in workshops to ensure that the content felt realistic and inclusive. The training draws on the HOPE framework from Brown University, which encourages gentle questions about hope, organised religion, personal spirituality, and the effects that these have on care. It is not a checklist, but an invitation to notice what gives people strength, comfort, and meaning.
During co-design workshops, staff reported that the framework helped them to listen differently. Instead of worrying about “opening a can of worms”, they embraced the idea of training in the topic. Some clinicians rediscovered their own sense of vocation and compassion in the process. Spiritual conversations, they said, could be a rewarding part of their day.
THE SHARP training will be launched in primary care later this year. Once it is live, it will offer continuing professional development (CPD) points and be freely available to practices across the UK. Our hope is that it will help to normalise conversations about spiritual health and give clinicians the confidence to explore what matters most to their patients.
As Sacks saw in Jimmie’s story, even when much is lost, the spirit can still be found. The task before us in health care and in the Church is to make space for that rediscovery. Both church and health care have always shared a calling to restore wholeness — to recognise that health is not merely the absence of disease, but the presence of hope, connection, and meaning.
Dr Ishbel Orla Whitehead is a GP and researcher in spiritual health. Open-access papers from the SHARP study will be available later this year.
