Spirituality and Empathy among Mental Health Practitioners: Moderating Role of Mindfulness

Abstract

The present study aims to explore the relationship between spirituality, mindfalness and empathy among mental health practitioner. For this purpose, 150 practicing mental health practitioner categorize into psychologist and psychiatrist (age ranging from 25 years to 50 years) were taken from different hospitals of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. It was hypothesized firstly that there is a significant positive relationship between spirituality, mindfulness and empathy among mental health practitioner. Secondly it was also hypothesized that spirituality significantly predicts empathy among mental health practitioner. Thirdly mindfulness moderates the relationship between spirituality and empathy among mental health practitioner. Fourth hypothesis of study was that there is no significant difference among spirituality across the gender. Fifth hypothesis was that female mental health practitioner have high level of empathy as compared to male mental health practitioner. Spirituality was assessed by The Spirituality scale (Delaney, 2005), for empathy The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (Spreng et al. 2009) and Mindfalness Attention Awareness scale was used to assess mindfulness. Results revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between spirituality, mindfulness and empathy among mental health practitioner. The results of regression analysis revealed that spirituality significantly predicts empathy. Moderation analysis indicates that the relationship of sub-scale of spirituality (self-discovery, eco-awareness) and empathy is significantly moderated by mindfalness while the relationship of sub-scale of spirituality (relationship) and empathy is not significantly moderated by mindfalness. Gender differences were not significant for spirituality, among mental health practitioner. Female mental health practitioner reported high level of empathy as compared to male M=41.26, SD=7.99 and female M=45.35, SD=7.53. The.findings