Description

The research carried out considers the importance of implicit non-religious
spirituality in order not to exclude certain sick people from programmes that may
be beneficial to them, and therefore investigates the need for reliable and valid
measures to evaluate this spirituality. Thus, three studies involving respectively
260, 404, and 69 participants were conducted to validate the spirituality scale of
Piedmont (1999) in French. Factor analyses validated a three-dimensional structure
of the scale. Other analyses revealed that this scale is of satisfactory reliability and
temporal stability. Finally, its predictive validity confirms the construct validity of
this tool. The discussion focuses on the implications of such a tool in a context
where the diagnosis of a disease such as fibromyalgia disrupts the “normal” course
of existence. It also leads to new needs for the sick person, and brings up existential
questions. This disease brings out the primary function of spirituality, namely the
question of the meaning that the sick person attributes to their life.