Personal Spirituality is Correlated With Psychological Resilience in a Training Marine Population

Introduction: Spirituality is a recognized component of the DoD Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff’s Total Force Fitness Framework. Although it is often considered akin to religiosity, the Total Force Fitness framework took care to consider components not centered on a theist perspective. Spirituality is considered an adaptive interpersonal characteristic for human flourishing and functioning. It is therefore commonly supposed that spirituality supports resilience, and that spirituality and resilience should be correlated. This study presents data investigating this hypothesis. Materials and Methods: A cohort of 452 junior officers (81.46% [n = 334] male; 25.69 ± 4.67 years old) in the U.S. Marine Corps completed an online survey including spirituality (Special Operations Command Spiritual Fitness Scale, SFS), and resilience (Ego-Resiliency Scale, ER89) metrics. The SFS was constructed to capture the elements of spiritual fitness as outlined in the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3405.01. Results: Four procedures for quantifying correlation were implemented. All four found a moderate positive correlation between elements of spirituality and resilience. Conclusion: The results supported the hypothesis that personal spirituality is related to resilience in military personnel. Replication and longitudinal design of these constructs and their complexities will bolster ongoing military resilience and spirituality programs.