This online study is part of a student's research at the University of Toronto, who is working towards developing a spirituality measure that can properly quantify this construct and support the investigation of spirituality (and healing) and its implications for our health.

Time required to fill out spirituality survey:  approximately 1 hour

Purpose: An important field of medicine has been emerging, which takes into consideration the healing of the soul through methods like forgiveness therapy and past life regression. To scientifically validate therapies in this new field, proper studies need to be done. One of the first steps is having a standard psychometric measure that can be relied upon to capture a broad range of spiritual behaviors (e.g., practicing unconditional forgiveness, meditation, and prayer) and religious behaviors (e.g., being a participant in specific religious practices, such as attending a house of worship and reciting lines from sacred texts).

Opportunity: I have been fortunate to connect with an active spiritual healer who has over a 90% success rate with healing chronic depression. He has agreed to put himself and his method under the strict scrutiny of a scientific study. This spiritual measure is one of the first steps necessary to move forward with investigating his work. I am very excited about being a part of making this therapy a recognized resource in our medical community and making available an alternative treatment method to the millions who suffer with chronic depression

Why should you help: There is not one standard psychometric measure that captures the breadth of religious and spiritual behaviors for medical practitioners to turn to. This is a major impediment in doing accurate studies for alternative treatments for chronic illness, such as assessing spiritual healing for chronic depression. I believe that taking into consideration the restoration of the soul for healing chronic disease is a big part of the future of medicine, and thus developing a tool to help conduct studies in this area is necessary.

            Over 1000 people are needed to complete this survey in order to meet the statistical requirements for this type of study. I am asking everyone I know (and their contacts) to please be part of the bigger picture in advancing medicine into this area. I know it is asking a lot to take an hour out of your busy schedule, but consider it something you are doing to help humanity. You will also have the opportunity to receive a free comprehensive personality report by completing this survey and enter to win a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.com. You can be assured that I am committed to pursuing this area of research and will make full use of your efforts. Please feel free to forward this email to others who may also wish to help. Thank you.

            The following link will take you directly to the survey and will provide you with instructions for it:  http://www.jbplab.net/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=94KH4m2
Thank you so much!

Sincerely,

Megan Walberg

University of Toronto