The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in serious problems related to the mental well-being of health care workers (HCW) and has highlighted the need to identify resources that could help HCW mitigate psychologically adverse responses. Specifically, HCW worldwide, including those in Germany, faced devastating psychological distress such as symptoms of anxiety and depression (1–8). However, hospital pastoral care workers (PCW) received little attention in previous research on the impact of the pandemic. Additionally, some PCW were declared heroes together with health care colleagues, but others were perceived merely as infection risks (9); research showed that some PCW were valued and effectively deployed during the pandemic (10), while others reported that their employers had told them not to come to work (11).

In addition to the burdens of HCW work during COVID-19, the pandemic also brought up the question of protective factors to the center of attention. A large meta-analysis on studies conducted during the pandemic showed that perceived external resources, perception of control, positive cognitive and behavioral coping, positive outcome expectancy and meaning, coherence and spirituality promote resilience (12). In HCW, self-efficacy and optimism have been shown to be protective resources (13, 14), but few researchers explicitly studied religious and spiritual beliefs in HCW during the pandemic (15).

In general, previous research on the relationship between religiosity or spirituality and anxiety in a variety of samples revealed mixed results. In research from primarily Western countries with a predominantly Christian population, Koenig (16) discovered that 147 (49%) studies reported an inverse relationship, while 33 (11%) reported greater anxiety in individuals with high religiosity or spirituality scores. Findings from the Middle East with a predominantly Muslim population paint a similar picture (17). Ano and Vasconcelles (18) found in their meta-analysis, that people who reported using negative forms of religious coping, such as defining stressors as a punishment from God for sins, experienced increased levels of depression, anxiety, and distress.

A large proportion of studies on the effects of spirituality or religiosity on anxiety levels in HCW during the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized their positive effects on mental health. In their review, Diego-Cordero et al. (19) found that spirituality was an important coping mechanism for HCW during the pandemic, promoting mental health and well-being. At the same time, a number of authors reported negative correlations between spirituality or religiosity and anxiety during COVID-19 (20–25), while some obtained no significant relationship between religiosity and anxiety (15). Other authors also did not find a significant association for COVID-19-related fear (26) and exhaustion (27). However, further authors found that negative religious coping elevated anxiety (28, 29).

Spirituality generally encompasses individual beliefs, ways of being, and practices aimed at attaining an experience of or unity with the transcendent or divine. Religion is a phenomenon that binds people together through shared belief systems and practices in pursuit of a connection to the divine. Beliefs, practices, and rituals can incorporate both spiritual and religious aspects (30). Spirituality or religiosity can be operationalized through the concept of transpersonal trust. Transpersonal trust refers to spiritual experiences of persons who witness the existence of a higher reality, trust it, and experience a strong connection with it (31). It reflects a dimension of trust in processes of life, in a higher purpose of life, or a higher power such as God (31, 32).

Belschner (31) hypothesized that psychotherapeutic treatment and psychiatric rehabilitation would be more effective if they combined the life form of doing (i.e., self-efficacy) and the life form of letting go (i.e., transpersonal trust), but he found treatment effects only in individuals who scored high on both dimensions. Furthermore, he (32) highlighted a strong connection of transpersonal trust to the concept of salutogenesis (33), which includes the key component of sense of coherence (SOC). The coherence hypothesis by Idler (34), which states that religion may benefit health insofar as it provides SOC and meaning (35), could explain the health benefits of religiosity. George et al. (36) later extended the hypothesis to describe that Antonovsky’s SOC mediates religiosity/spirituality and mental health.

According to Antonovsky (37), SOC consists of three elements, namely comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. It focuses on the ability of people to understand the respective situation they find themselves in as well as to discover meaning and have the capacity to act in a way that may promote health (37, 38). In their systematic review, Eriksson and Lindström (39) revealed, that a higher SOC was negatively related to depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. Research on HCW has also found, that a higher SOC leads to fewer mental health problems (15, 40–43).

The aim of our study was to investigate the potential protective effect of transpersonal trust against anxiety in physicians as well as in PCW working in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany; this crisis was existentially challenging for both professions. Transpersonal trust is a core concept in the work of the PCW, but less so for physicians; nonetheless, it could be an important protective factor against anxiety for both groups. To our knowledge, our study is the first to measure and compare transpersonal trust in both professional groups.

First, we were interested in whether transpersonal trust differs between PCW and physicians. Based on previous findings on religiosity and spirituality in HCW (44), we hypothesized that PCW would report higher levels of religiosity and spirituality than physicians. In addition, we expected to replicate previous findings on the negative association between spirituality and anxiety (19) as well as between SOC and anxiety (e.g., Schmuck et al. (15)) during the COVID-19 pandemic, and hypothesized a positive association between transpersonal trust and SOC based on Belschner’s (32) assumption of a strong connection between these two concepts. Furthermore, we were interested in how transpersonal trust relates to anxiety as opposed to other resource factors, such as SOC, resilience, and optimism. Finally, we sought to investigate whether SOC moderated the relationship between transpersonal trust and anxiety. Based on the proximity of the construct transpersonal trust to Antonovsky’s (33) SOC postulated by Belschner (32) and the sense of coherence hypothesis (36) we assumed a significant effect.

The aim of our study was to investigate the potentially protective effect of transpersonal trust against anxiety in physicians and PCW during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we found support for our hypothesis that transpersonal trust would be higher among PCW than among physicians, which supported earlier findings of higher levels of spirituality and religiosity among PCW and lower levels among physicians (44). Anxiety, SOC, optimism, and resilience did not differ significantly between the two groups.

We could not confirm our hypothesis of a significant negative correlation between spirituality, as measured by transpersonal trust, and anxiety. This finding was initially surprising, as a majority of research on the relationship between spirituality or religiosity and anxiety in times of COVID-19 pandemic supported the protective character of spirituality or religiosity. However, others found no significant correlation between religiosity and anxiety (15, 26) or even found that negative religious coping elevates anxiety (28, 29). Koenig (16) also highlights the inconsistency and heterogeneity of findings on the relationship. One possible explanation for the nonsignificant correlation between transpersonal trust and anxiety could be the specialization of religiosity and spirituality scales (59). The TPV operationalizes primarily the intensity of spirituality (59) in context of a connection with a higher power (31) as a specific aspect of spirituality that could be independent from anxiety. Furthermore, the result is consistent with the finding, that spirituality as an attitude or belief, as described by the TPV, only had a small protective effect, whereas spiritual experiences may be beneficial (60).

Our multiple regression analysis revealed that SOC explained the largest amount of variance in generalized anxiety, whereas transpersonal trust, optimism, and resilience explained only little variance. In a very large German sample recruited during the COVID-19 pandemic that were also our data source, SOC, as measured by a very short three-item scale (61), was also associated with lower anxiety (15). Meanwhile, other researchers found associations between high SOC and fewer mental health problems in HCW (40, 42, 43, 62) as well as in the general population (39).

The moderation analysis provided surprising results: Low SOC moderated a significant negative correlation between transpersonal trust and anxiety; the effect was negative but nonsignificant with moderate SOC; and very high SOC was associated with a significant positive correlation between transpersonal trust and anxiety. The negative correlation between the two variables with low SOC could be explained with Belschner’s (32) emphasis on the relationship between the two constructs of transpersonal trust and SOC; transpersonal trust can temper high anxiety in individuals who perceive challenges as less comprehensible, manageable, or meaningful. Another possible explanation is that people who experience little control themselves, and thus have comparatively low SOC, can easily entrust control to a higher being. Following this line of argument, it seems reasonable that with low SOC, transpersonal trust is associated with less anxiety.

However, the significant positive correlation between transpersonal trust and anxiety with high SOC, is more difficult to explain. A possible, though somewhat speculative explanation, is that in persons with high SOC and high transpersonal trust, the crisis was more devastating to their faith, and created inner conflict and thereby anxiety. Interestingly, researchers found that people associated COVID-19 infection with doubts regarding the power of God (63). A further cautious interpretation of this result is that if the situation is already perceived as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful, the ability to trust nevertheless leads to allowing more fear in addition to active coping, since anxiety is secured in a higher instance.

Our study provides exciting results on the relationships of spirituality/religiosity and SOC with anxiety including the moderating effect of SOC. We were the first to use such a large sample of PCW in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine this relationship. The results suggest that transpersonal trust alone cannot initially be considered a protective factor against anxiety. Our results support Belschner’s (31) finding that transpersonal trust as a sole factor does not lead to a better treatment effect. However, Belschner also found that high expressions of self-efficacy (64) and transpersonal trust (32) improved treatment outcome (31), yet we did not find such correlations. Future researchers may examine the relationship between transpersonal trust and other concepts of coping such as self-efficacy to gain a more detailed understanding.

One limitation of our study is the cross-sectional design, which does not allow for conclusions about the interrelationships between generalized anxiety, transpersonal trust, SOC, optimism, and resilience. Some of our propositions for the explanation of the moderation effect we obtained imply a causal effect of SOC or transpersonal trust on anxiety, which may be supported by earlier research, but remains speculative given that it is based on simple correlations. A second limitation is the use of very short scales to measure generalized anxiety (two items) and optimism (one item), which we chose due to the necessity for brevity to suit healthcare professionals’ time constraints. Furthermore, the use of the screening instrument GAD-2 with its two items inevitably leads to an overestimation of anxiety in our sample, albeit a moderate one. There might also be a nationality effect. In particular, findings on spirituality and religiosity and its relation to anxiety have been primarily studied in the United States (see e.g. the review article by Koenig (16)). It is possible and likely that religiosity and spirituality have different forms and effects in a largely secular European society compared to more religiously bound American contexts (65, 66), which limits international comparisons.

In summary, our hypothesis that transpersonal trust alone could be a protective factor against anxiety in physicians and PCW during the COVID-19 pandemic was not confirmed. Rather, the results point to the significant role of SOC as a protective factor against anxiety and highlight the complexity of the relationship between transpersonal trust and anxiety. The findings indicate that individuals who exhibit low levels of anxiety tend to possess either elevated transpersonal trust or a strong SOC.

One implication for future studies is the extensive testing of the sense of coherence hypothesis (34, 36). For example, further constructs of mental health could be included in the calculations, such as depression or PTSD, longer questionnaires could be applied and both moderation and mediation analyses could be calculated. Furthermore, it would be possible to explore the extent to which the results are the same or different outside the pandemic context and whether the pattern of results can also be found in other occupational groups in the healthcare system. An inclusion of other religiosity and spirituality scales with a different focus than the TPV could also provide interesting results. The finding that, in our sample, optimism and resilience explained very little variance in anxiety, also remains an open question for future researchers to answer.

Our study’s findings reveal practical implications, with SOC emerging as a significant protective factor against anxiety, emphasizing the importance of developing tailored trainings and workshops to enhance SOC among HCW. The findings also suggest the potential benefit of integrating spiritual support with psychological interventions, especially considering the unique stresses faced by PCW and physicians during pandemics. This approach highlights the necessity for healthcare institutions to provide targeted mental health support and develop brief, validated instruments for rapid assessment in crisis situations. By promoting a variety of positive coping mechanisms tailored to diverse beliefs and preferences, healthcare settings can better support their staff in managing stress and anxiety effectively.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving humans were approved by Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

AC: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. AB: Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis, Validation. J-KM: Writing – review & editing. ST: Validation, Writing – review & editing. WB: Writing – review & editing. YE: Writing – review & editing. EM: Writing – review & editing. PB: Writing – review & editing. LJ-B: Writing – review & editing. CA: Writing – review & editing. SS-S: Writing – review & editing. MR: Writing – review & editing, Methodology. FG: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – review & editing.