Category: Health and Wellness
Spirituality enhances health — particularly mental health — regardless of a person’s faith, according to new research.
In a new study, researchers at the University of Missouri suggest that health care providers may want to begin tailoring treatments and rehabilitation programs to accommodate an individual’s spiritual inclinations.
The study used the results of three surveys to determine if correlations existed among a person’s self-reported mental and physical health, personality factors, and spirituality in Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Catholics and Protestants.
Across all five faiths, a greater degree of spirituality was related to better mental health, specifically lower levels of neuroticism and greater extraversion, according to Dr. Dan Cohen, assistant teaching professor of religious studies at MU and one of the co-authors of the study.
“Our prior research shows that the mental health of people recovering from different medical conditions, such as cancer, stroke, spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury, appears to be related significantly to positive spiritual beliefs and especially congregational support and spiritual interventions,” he said.
“Spiritual beliefs may be a coping device to help individuals deal emotionally with stress.”
Cohen believes spirituality may help people’s mental health by reducing their self-centeredness and developing their sense of belonging to a larger whole.
“Health workers may also benefit from learning how to minimize the negative side of a patient’s spirituality, which may manifest itself in the tendency to view misfortune as a divine curse,” the researcher noted.
Spiritual interventions, including religious-based counseling, meditation, and forgiveness, may enhance spiritually-based beliefs, practices, and coping strategies in positive ways, the researchers add.
lol messed up the title of that. omg
Don't worry Laced, the neighsayers will flood the topic in a while to point out how everything in this article is bollucks. For the record, I think this is certainly an interesting article. From a neutral perspective, I think regardless of belief, the belief and conviction in that belief can create positivity, and that positivity is definately healing. Much illness is linked to emotion. A lot of treatments don't recognize that. Certainly there is a physical aspect to illness which must be treated, but mental and emotional well-being plays a greater part than than is given credit.
I've read this before. If people want to believe that a chat with their imaginary friend will help them feel better, go for it, but I don't think doctors should be forced to incorporate it into their surgical routines. They're doctors.
You want a doctor, go to the hospital, you want your imaginary friend, go to your priest. Keep the two separate.
my thoughts exactly, Cody.
Aaaand there they are, right on schedule. You two do realize I hope that it's merely a matter of acknowledgement. They don't have to accept it, they just have to accept that the person they are treating accepts it.
Of course I do. But I'm not going to expect a surgeon to memorize all the little phrases religious people like to cling to in order to make a patient feel better. The job of a surgeon is to cut you open, change something, then sew you back up. Its not their job to tell you, "God is looking out for you, you'll be ok".
If you want to pray in the hospital and feel better, go for it, but the doctor doesn't need to have a part in that.
Cody said what I was just going to. if you wanna pray on your own time, do so, but to hope that others will stoop to that same level, is not okay.
Nobody's expecting a doctor to pray for you. It's merely a matter of recognizing that there are others with that belief, and to respect that belief. A hard concept to swallow for some, but then these days, as a society we aren't really known for trying to understand one another or respecting one another's beliefs.
very true indeed. This is definitely an interesting article though.
Hell BG, its been my experience that people barely try to understand their own beliefs, let alone others.
But let me see if I can make my point a little differently. In my opinion the spirituality or lack thereof of a patient should be as much the doctor's business or concern as what color car the patient drives. That is to say, absolutely none.
There are certain questions a doctor should ask, height, weight, medical background, alergies, what's wrong, where does it hurt, that stupid "if the pain were a number between one and ten' question. All of these are good questions for the doctor to ask because it allows him/her to do the job they are trained for better. After all, you came to them with the toilet plunger lodged in your nose, and you're asking them to get it out.
What they don't need to do is ask if your particular imaginary friend is named allah, yahweh or thor. Cuz guess what, no matter what religion you are, the toilet plunger doesn't belong in your nose. Catholics have the same anatomy as hindus, muslims as mormans, budhists as helenistic polytheists. We're all human, and we all have generally the same parts. Parenthetically, any missing parts would be a good question to be asked by the doctor.
The doctor's job is not predicated on what imaginary friend you babble to. Even if it isn't a god you babble to, even if its a squirrel named Mr. squeakernuts, it doesn't change the doctors job. No doctor has ever said, "Well this guys a morman, so we'll need to remove his liver before we can remove the hampster from his rectum".
This is why me and chelsea say that if you want to babble to your imaginary friend Mr. Squeakernuts, go for it, but it makes no difference when you're having the hampster removed from your rectum, or the toilet plunger removed from your nose. It is none of the doctor's business, and does not effect his work in the slightest.
and, as has been said countless times, BG, but is obviously a difficult concept for you to grasp (and I'm sure Cody would agree) we don't respect your beliefs, cause we don't agree with them. we respect that there are differing beliefs in the world, but that's the extent of it.
saying we should respect beliefs different from ours is like saying I should trust every single person I come into contact with cause they're human. that isn't the way it works, though, sorry to say.
I'm not saying doctors need to care what religion a person is. But patients, regardless of gender, belief, ethnicity or hell, species, should be made to be comfortable. If that sometimes means their beliefs do need to be taken into consideration. Whether you two like it or not or believe it or not, there is a corrolation between mental, spiritual and physical health. Neither of you need to care about that. It makes absolutely no difference to you whether doctors recognize that corrolation or not, because it doesn't affect you in any way. Of course you'll say it does, because that's just what you do. You use words like (in your experience) and (In my oppinion) and that's all well and good. You don't know of any other way to think. I don't fault you for that. I do however fault you for being intolerant of everyone else who believes differently than you. I don't expect to be respected by people like you just because. But I do expect the same level of tolerance and civility that I have done my best to show towards both of you. In this case, the "I" represents all people who are not as you are. You preach the word of intollerence and scorn just as much as some religious people I know. You are highly intelligent, but you can see nothing but your own views. I respect your views, and your right to excersize them. But who are you to turn your nose up at other people who believe differently? Sure you've had bad experiences with certain religious people, but that does not give you the right to condemn every single one of us and treat us like children. And before you say how I shouldn't feel personally attacked, yes, that's exactly how you do come off. You come across as know-it-alls who, despite their obvious intelligence, use that intelligence to be spiteful and scornful of others unlike them. Perhaps I too come off a little self-righteous, but unlike you I at least attempt to respect other people's beleifs. Even if you don't respect our beliefs; even if you don't agree with them and think they are stupid, it wouldn't hurt your constant need to be right to respect that other people believe differently from you.
nor would it hurt you to realize and accept that we are who we are, like it or not, and that, no matter what you spew in hopes of making us see things your way, that'll never happen.
cause, in case you haven't realized, neither Cody or I are fazed by the things you say to try and intimidate us, and get us to cry in a corner as you do, simply cause we have differing views and are unafraid to vocalize them repeatedly.
Sure the patient should be comfortable, all patients should be comfortable, but where does religion have to do with comfort? If the patient wants to invite a priest in, that is up to the patient, not the doctor.
Oh, and BG, what in the world makes you think your religion should be respected? Your religion promotes biggotry, hatred, oppression, racism, murder, and a whole list of other things. Why in the name of all that is holy (pun intended) would I respect that? Simply because you get your panties in a wad whenever I don't? Start having a religion that isn't evil and twisted and backward, and I'll start respecting it. Until then, pull up your pants and stop whining like a child about how we're not being nice. Or grow a pair of balls, educate yourself about your own beliefs, and start defending them. And I mean actually defending them, not posting some links to a website where we can read about it. Defend them with your own knowledge, not someone elses.
And where, in this entire post, have I been disrespectful to a religion? Can I get a copy and paste please? Cuz I can give you some where BG has been a presumptive errogant ass, but I don't think I see any from me and chelsea, except that we disagree with BG. Help me out here?
yes, please enlighten us, BG.
You know what? this is going to sound very odd coming from me; a very vocal atheist, but I actually think the relationship between spirituality and better mental health is valid. Now, having said all that, I think spirituality helps by numbing you to the cold hard facts, as do drugs and alcohol. Of course these types of things will help you short term. If you honestly believe there's a God up there who will handle your fait with perfection, and you know there are other people who also share this bond with the same so-called "god", of course that's going to help. But again, taking drugs make you feel as though there is no pain, making you either oblivious, or apathetic to the reality all around you. In either case, the relief is entirely in your own head. And, much like religion, drugs have great benefits when not abused, but get the wrong drugs into the wrong hands, and things get really dangerous really quickly. Point is, whether you feel you've had direct answers to prayer or not, the peace and relief you feel from praying alone is your own psychology; not the work of God. I'm sure if you were only happy when you felt you received direct answers to prayer, you probably wouldn't rely so much on it. In short, sure, your spiritual well being can help the state of your mental health, but to suggest that doctors should use this in practice is, in my opinion, just as dangerous as using acid to provoke creativity.
Oh I know its valid, I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was denying that. But I don't think the doctor's should take part in it. Children are better off if they have an imaginary friend and think santa clause is real, but I don't think a doctor should continue that believe past a healthy age in the name of happy children.
Mister squeakernuts healed my stomach.
And let's be clear by what is meant by a religious improvement in this situation:
One will pray, and of course no effect, but they are said to have improved in their character by the situation, or there is a purpose for it or something. This was never a scientific study to begin with, not the way real scientific studies go. Because in religion, there is no bearer of proofs: something goes right? praise your deity. Something goes wrong? Praise your deity because your deity knows best. Such things can be neither proven nor disproven: it's lawyering and not science. Science describes how variables work together to produce results. You don't write software, produce an accidtnal bug, then tell your users there is a higher purpose to that bug and that is really isn't an accident. That is the place for religion.
Some states refer to self defense as justifiable homocide. Religion in part could be seen as justifiable incompetence, where it is a way to explain away a bad result. But this is not the same as actually getting down to the business of fixing the problem. People who get down to the business of fixing the problem need no justification, and need no lawyering to change terms and definitions, or deny the problem was not there, or is actually an asset.
Healthcare improved when we got away from using witch doctors, priests, shamans and other spiritualists to actually solve the problems. Can someone of your faith make you feel better during a crisis? Yes. Can that have a positive effect on your health? Yes, as has been stated: stress and the lack thereof have physical ramifications. But in the business of science lawyers need not apply. Take their justifications and redefinitions of terms, aka "what is is," somewhere else, and let people who know what they're doing get back to work. And, when science has not yet got the tools to describe the situation, they can certainly eloquate profusely on how it was really meant this way. Probably serves people in the holding period before said discoveries are made. Many humans at least feel better with said justifications.
I'm on the atheists' side on this one. I don't think it's for a doctor to provide religious counseling before they slice you open. A bit of a contradiction, isn't it, when the government is completely hell bent on separating church and state, and yet trying to push this crap? Now, if a patient believe in whatever they want to believe in, and it boosts their morale, which in turn helps them heal, that's great. But they can surely do all that without the doctor having to get involved in that process.
As I've said before, I'll truly believe it when I witness the regeneration of an amputated limb.