...och då ser vi livet på ett nytt sätt

Sammanfattning

As society is faced with troubled times, existential health has become a growing public health concern in Sweden. Existential health has been established as a field of health science since the early 1990s. The research has demonstrated a positive relationship with other health dimensions such as mental and somatic health, as well as to resilience and to general quality of life. The aim of this study is to provide a deepened understanding of what existential health can mean in Sweden today. This has been done through semistructured interviews with a group of people with special experience of dealing with existential matters – the clergy. Through thematic analysis, three themes about the meaning of existential health were developed: Perceiving a Spiritual Context of Life, Openness to Life and Loving thy Neighbour. The findings indicate that our way of making sense of the world influences our ability to perceive meaning, which in turn impacts our ability to engage with the world in a community promoting way. The results point to the importance of resisting certain habits of contemporary culture and society to diminish the spiritual and communal dimensions of life. The findings support the existential health literature which underlines the importance of experiencing oneself as a part of something bigger, having a sense of contact with life, and of meaningful life engagement. What this study brings more light on is the particular significance of relationships marked by love, benevolence, and solidarity. Based on the results, this study recommends a holistic approach to public existential health work, which takes social and meaning making dimensions of being human into account, and facilitates alternatives to instrumental rationality as guiding principle for thinking and organising.