Spiritual self-care in adolescents: A qualitative study

One of the existential questions during adolescence concerns the ambiguity regarding spirituality. Adolescents at this age not only have spiritual, psychological and unique needs, but have spiritual requirements that help them to relax and solve problems. Therefore, this qualitative study aimed to understand the concept of spiritual self-care in Iranian adolescents in 2019. This qualitative study using a content analysis approach was conducted on 14 adolescents with an age range of 14-20 years, who were selected using the purposeful sampling method. Data were collected by semi-structured interviews which were carried out between 04 March and 20 August 2019. The interviews were transcribed immediately after the recording, and then were analyzed using direct content analysis. Two hundred and fifty-two primary codes related to the adolescents' spiritual self-care were extracted from the analysis, which determined four main aspects of spiritual self-care (spiritual belief, spiritual experience, social-religious activities and spiritual growth). The findings of this study showed that, spiritual self-care is a form of self-care by which a person uses his or her spiritual beliefs, teachings and experiences to control stress and manage crises, and their ability to cope with problems. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2020