Abstract
Background. Spirituality is a significant component that influences the quality of health and rehabilitation care and can impact how assessments, interventions, and therapeutic decisions are made. This narrative review examines the opportunities and challenges of integrating spirituality into the health and rehabilitation system. It clarifies the role and responsibility of rehabilitation professionals in addressing patients’ spiritual needs.
Methods. A comprehensive search was conducted in SID, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar using keywords such as “spirituality,” “health,” “rehabilitation,” and “challenges” between 2011 and 2025. Ultimately, 29 eligible studies were selected for final analysis.
Results. The findings suggest that a focus on spirituality can humanize therapists’ attitudes, holistically enrich them, strengthen the therapist–patient relationship, and enhance patient engagement in rehabilitation by increasing hope, empathy, and resilience. At the same time, lack of specialized training, absence of organizational policies and standards, workload pressure, limited resources, and cultural sensitivities were identified as major challenges to integrating spirituality into rehabilitation services. Cultural-religious alignment between patient and therapist increases trust and treatment adherence, whereas misalignment may increase patient resistance and the likelihood of treatment dropout. The results also suggest that integrating spiritual elements into health education curricula and developing organizational policies that adhere to ethical principles and avoid the imposition of beliefs can help reduce stress, increase tolerance, and improve functional outcomes. Despite existing evidence, methodological limitations, and the lack of standardized tools for assessing spirituality, there is a need for more rigorous research and the design of culturally sensitive scientific frameworks.