If you wanted to engage in a serious discussion about this topic it would be helpful to consider where some medical research is heading. Some find academic papers a little dry.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/278730/
Academic papers are fine - my bread and butter is engineering studies and government reports - but I'm not sure what point you were trying to make with this one.
It talked about how religiosity - i.e. being religious - is beneficial. As someone who's non-religious but also has strong beliefs about things like respecting patient autonomy, the idea of someone running around a hospital, say, with the idea that religiosity is an unqualified good and who has the goal of infusing religiosity - of any variety - into patient care is not something I'm comfortable with. It sounds like a recipe for treating non-religious patients with a lack of respect.
I'm fine with seeing to the religious needs of religious patients, particularly if they're having a long hospital stay. It's an important part of keeping them happy and comfortable, which is a benefit in and of itself and I'm sure has therapeutic benefit as well.
All that is fine. I think an interfaith chaplain probably isn't equipped to handle all of those needs themselves - some mainstream religions require that only their own priests can do certain rituals - but it makes sense for there to be a "point man" who can deal with some needs directly bring in other religious ministers as needed for the rest.
What you've said thst raises concerns, though is that while you've been vague about what "spiritual well-being" means,
- the way you describe implies to me that you expect that non-religious people have "spiritual well-being" that needs attending to, but
- when you talk about how "spiritual well-being" is attended to, it seems like you always come back to religion.
So how does this all translate into a chaplain's approach to non-religious patients?
If you were a chaplain and you encountered a non-religious patient, what would you do? Would you respect their lack of religion? Would you be able to provide them anything of value?
Overall, I think that chaplaincy has a horrible track record with respecting the rights of the non-religious. I've heard too many stories of chaplains using their position as a way to find a vulnerable "mission field" that they wouldn't have been able to proselytize to otherwise.
Even when the chaplain's motives are good, I've found that many of them just don't have the skill set to deal with the non-religious. For instance, I remember the officiant at my father's funeral. He was a Protestant minister and also a chaplain, and he tried to counsel and console my family and me before the funeral service. It became apparent very quickly that he had nothing to say that would bave provided comfort to someone who didn't believe in God or Heaven. He just couldn't relate to an atheist mindset, so he ended up being inept at what he was trying to do.
It's important to appreciate the medical model has its limitations. Its easy to classify antisocial personality disorder and any other aberration of human character as a disease, but the purpose of doing so is to find a remedy or cure. Despite all the advances in medical science, that's not going to happen anytime soon with ASPD. Why? Its not really a disease like pneumonia or even depression.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with your original point. A psychopath certainly wouldn't be given a clean bill of mental health, so I'm still not sure if there's anything in the term "spiritual well-being" that isn't covered by "mental well-being."
