Religion, spirituality and belief: Policy context
There is a lack of up-to-date data about religion, and particularly about religion and health, in Scotland. In 2023, the Scottish Government published Scotland’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025, which aims to strengthen the equality evidence base in Scotland, including improving data around religion.
The Equality Act (2010)
The Equality Act (2010) brings together previous legislation to unify and simplify the law in relation to equality and discrimination. The Equality Act (2010) identifies a number of protected characteristics which are prevented by law from being discriminated against. These are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, sex, sexual orientation, and religion and belief.
Spiritual care
Spiritual care is recognised by the Scottish Government and the NHS as ‘a necessary and integral part of the whole person care offered by the NHS in Scotland and must be provided in an equal and fair way for those of all faith communities or none.’.
Further information on spiritual care in the NHS can be found on the NHS Education for Scotland website.
Further information on actions the Scottish Government is taking to eliminate discrimination based on religion and beliefs can be found at the Faith and belief pages of their website.
More information on the right to health of everyone in Scotland, and what that means for health service providers, can be found on the Public Health Scotland website.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
