Effects of pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago on mental health and well-being: a quantitative and qualitative study

Last February, the defence sessions of the final projects of the Master's Degree in General Health Psychology of the promotion 9 2022-24 took place. The work "Effects of the pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago on mental health and well-being and psychological mechanisms of change", tutored by Dr. Albert Feliu, received an honourable mention.

Carles Freire, author of the paper, points out that "the Camino de Santiago is a very significant experience for many people. In my case it marked a turning point in my professional career as a marketing executive and the desire to return to university and start studying psychology in my fifties. Now I have had the opportunity to approach this experience again from the perspective of a researcher and psychologist. Using the Ultreya Project database (www.estudiocamino.org), this Master's thesis carried out a quantitative analysis of the changes associated with the Camino on different variables of mental health and well-being based on longitudinal data provided by more than 400 pilgrims.   Notably, a qualitative analysis was also carried out following Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis model, integrating the opinions of more than 200 walkers. At the end of the Camino, a significant reduction in negative affect, emotional discomfort and stress was observed overall, as well as an increase in positive affect, happiness, life satisfaction, mindfulness and coherence with personal values. It was also observed that these improvements prevailed also three months after the end of the pilgrimage. For most of the people who participated in the study, the Camino was a positive and recommendable experience, because of the connection with other people, the contact with nature and the experience of an "inner journey" of self-knowledge and personal change. A minority of people have a critical opinion, caused by physical problems or pain, difficulties in socialising and the experience of being too crowded. For many people the Camino is a transformative experience that allows them to adopt a new perspective on life and its meaning.

 "The tutoring of this TFM and, in particular, of Carles' work, has been an honour and a pleasure for me, both for the subject matter and the great result, as well as for the fluidity with which it has been developed. Carles has shown an excellent aptitude and research attitude all along the way, combining excellent judgement with a great capacity for learning, autonomy, detail orientation and motivation for the subject. Thanks to Carles' work, for the first time, it has been possible to carry out an analysis of the qualitative part of the Ultreya study that will allow us to report on the benefits of the Camino from the perspective of the pilgrims themselves, complementing perfectly with the quantitative results of the study. Considering that every year more than 400,000 people undertake the Camino, I think we are not wrong in stating that the results of this TFM can be of interest to a really wide audience". - Albert Feliu