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This paper discusses the Afro-Brazilian religions (candomblé, umbanda, quimbanda, muslim, and vodum) and points out the issues related to the spiritual distress as a nursing diagnosis.
Risk factors that increase the likelihood of discrimination against girls in India have not been well studied. In this study of hospitalized children in Punjab, India, girls were less likely to be in the newborn or infant age groups, to be of the Sikh religion, or to come from far away than were boys. These differences suggest that these factors are significant risk factors for denied access to medical care for girls living in Punjab, India.
Because of the deep interpersonal significance of decisions made at the end of life, it is not surprising that religion has played an important role in patient and family decision making. Specific religious concerns about death and dying have led to religious advance directives. Advance directives offer a case study of models of interaction between religious communities and secular institutions. This paper examines why such directives have been created and how they may affect health care decisions. An analysis of their strengths and weaknesses concludes that specific religious instructions are unnecessary in written directives and may undermine both the religious and health care goals of patients.
OBJECTIVE: Previous research has found an association between writing about traumatic events and well-being. This study examined the effects of taking a religious perspective during a trauma-writing exercise. METHOD: Participants included 177 college students who were assigned randomly to either a conventional trauma writing or a religious trauma writing condition. Participants in the conventional writing condition were instructed to write about a traumatic experience, while participants in the religious writing condition were instructed to write about the trauma from a religious/spiritual perspective. Well-being was assessed by symptoms of PTSD at one-month follow-up. RESULTS: Writing condition was found to interact with trauma severity and gender to affect PTSD symptoms at follow-up. Conventional writing was more effective (in reducing PTSD symptoms) for participants reporting lower trauma severity than for those who reported higher trauma severity. Effects of religious writing on PTSD symptoms were not influenced by trauma severity. Also, women benefited more from religious writing than men did with regard to reductions in PTSD symptoms. CONCLUSION: It appears possible to adapt the conventional written emotional expression procedure in a way that encourages individuals to take a religious perspective, thereby augmenting effects on distress. These findings support further investigation of integrating religion into trauma interventions, particularly for individuals exposed to highly traumatic events.
Concern here is with the relationship between religious affiliation and life satisfaction. Past research points to religion as an important factor in adjustment of the aged. However, there have been contradictory findings on aging and church attendance. Church attendance patterns are examined in relation to aging and personal adjustment. The intervening variable of the elderly person's physical disabilities is offered as an explanation for declining church attendance with age.
The effect of sex, religion, and amount of alcohol consumed on the number of self-reported alcohol-related problem behaviors was examined for 331 students who were approached on three Eastern United States campuses and asked to complete anonymously a questionnaire reporting the number of drinking-related problem behaviors. It was hypothesized that Catholics, men, and people who drank more would report more problem behaviors. A 2 x 3 x 4 factorial analysis of variance with unequal ns showed all three hypotheses were confirmed, but no significant interactions were found. Given the enormity of the problem of alcohol abuse in the United States, further research examining alcohol use and the associated problem behaviors is essential.
A sample of 50 retired civil servants completed the Bradburn Balanced Affect Scale together with measures of personal prayer and public church attendance. No significant association emerged between psychological well-being and religion.
This analysis examined self-reported use of steroids by 478 adolescents in Dade County, Florida public schools during 1992. Statistically significant factors which tended to increase the probability of steroid use by adolescents included peer use of steroids, being male, and residing either with their mothers or on their own. The only statistically significant variables which are negatively related to steroid use are that religion is an important part of their lives and that students are involved in musical activities at school.
To examine the relationship of religion and perceived stress, 97 undergraduate college students responded to the Perceived Stress Scale, the Spiritual Well-being Scale, and the Intrinsic/Extrinsic-Revised scale during a period of extreme national stressors during Fall 2001, namely, the September 11th terrorist attacks, anthrax scare, and war in Afghanistan, in addition to the local stressor of pending final college examinations. Scores on the Perceived Stress Scale were negatively correlated to scores on Existential Well-being (-.66), Religious Well-being (-.43), and Intrinsic Religious Orientation (-.44). Age was unrelated to all variables. Both the quality (well-being) of students' religious experience and the orientation of that experience were related to their perception of stress.
Contrary to popular stereotypes, current studies of adolescent populations suggest that Black teens are less likely to use illicit drugs than are White teens. This study investigates the extent to which differences in religiosity are responsible for racial differences in drug use. Using data from a national survey of United States high school seniors, our results indicate that religion does provide some protection from drug use by adolescents. However, religiosity has less of an impact on the drug use of Black adolescents, perhaps as a result of the diverse roles of the Black church.
Physicians are confronted with new information from the popular media, peer-reviewed journals, and their patients regarding the association of religious and spiritual factors with health outcomes. Although religion and spirituality have become more visible within health care, there are considerable ethical issues raised when physicians incorporate these dimensions into their care. Spiritualities are responsive to patient needs by offering beliefs, stories, and practices that facilitate the creation of a personally meaningful world, a constructed "reality" in the face of illness, disability, or death. It is largely through narrative that physicians incorporate into the health care encounter the spiritualities that are central to their patients' lived experience of illness and health.
OBJECTIVES: To determine if patient satisfaction varies by level of individual religiosity. METHODS: Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative sample of older adults in the United States, were used to assess the relationship between religious salience (importance) and patients' satisfaction with their health care encounters. RESULTS: Higher levels of religious salience are significantly related to being very satisfied with one's health care, even after demographic, social, and health variables are taken into account. CONCLUSIONS: Researchers, practitioners, and administrators should be aware that religion may significantly influence how patients rate their health care experiences.
Greater participation in religious activities is associated with better health outcomes. In the US, most inpatients have religious needs, but physicians address them only occasionally and infrequently refer patients to clergy. US medical students are learning to do spiritual assessments and integrate the findings into patient management, which may reverse this. Religion does not play a central role in the lives of Australians as it does for US citizens. Research is required to better understand the spirituality of Australians, its relationship to health and the benefit, cost and acceptability of doctors enquiring into spirituality compared with spiritual advisers and counsellors.
Religion can be a guide in the quest of older adults for a fuller understanding of their lives and purposes as they cope with the diminishments brought about by aging.
In this paper a brief analysis of the development of the Western world after the second world war is attempted. It is stated that since the start of the sixties, anomie can be perceived in many of the components of its socio-cultural complex, especially in some major areas like the economy and religion, deeply influencing the others. To test the assumption that Durkheim's anomie theory is still valid and offers an adequate frame of reference for research of the underlying phenomena, the outcome of a research on 9.189 completed suicides in the Netherlands during the period 1961--1970 is presented, giving force to the validity and usefulness of this theory.
CONTEXT: A growing body of literature suggests that religion and spirituality can help older adults to maintain and recover both physical and mental health. OBJECTIVE: To better understand how older adults perceive the role played by religious belief and activity in maintaining and recovering health and to explore the hypothesis that spiritual support contributes to increased sense of coherence and enhanced psychological well-being. DESIGN: Qualitative research (i.e., focus groups and interviews). SETTING: Two continuing care retirement communities. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 41 male and female residents aged 66 to 92 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Concepts were identified and tracked, leading to hypothesis generation and theory refinement. RESULTS: Most of the older adults in this study believed that a higher power (i.e., God) supports them constantly, protecting, guiding, teaching, helping, and healing. They believe that prayer can heal both physical and mental illness, if it is God's will to do so. God is perceived to work through the mundane world (e.g., through physicians, medicine, loving friends, and helpful strangers). Many expressed the belief that having a relationship with God forms the foundation of their psychological well-being. CONCLUSION: These preliminary findings suggest that religious belief may have a significant influence on the psychological well-being of older adults, and that the subjective experience of spiritual support may form the core of the spirituality-health connection.
The object of this research is the study of the different kinds of relationships between medicine and religion that appear in the Spanish anti-superstition discourse from the 16th to the 18th century. Despite the relationship of alliance and collaboration between the two professional groups proposed by the Spanish theologians in their essays, situations of conflict and mutual distrust could also arise. The professional physician could be an ally of the Christian priest but also a dangerous rival.
Are we right to establish a parallel between, on the one hand, Bernadette Soubirous, the pious visionary of Lourdes, and Thérèse Martin, the nun of Lisieux, and on the other hand, the hysterical women who were shown in public by Charcot at the "Salpêtrière Hospital"? If we compare the way all of them were photographed, we bring to light something similar between two facts: I. - the attempts to give a new medical significance to religious-ordinarily speaking-poses; 2 - the attempts to give a particular religious significance to common body positions. So we are led to suggest meaningful changes in the links between medicine and religion, expressed by the language of women's bodies.