|
Study Shows Spiritual Struggle Can Increase Chances of Dying
WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - While many scientific studies have bolstered the idea that religious beliefs and activities of a medically ill patient can contribute to healing and recovery, a new study draws a correlation between religious struggle and a greater risk of dying from illness.
The two-year study, conducted by researchers from Bowling Green University in Ohio and Duke University in Durham, N.C., found that among patients studied, those who died reported higher levels of spiritual struggle in coping with their illnesses.
The 596 patients surveyed, aged 55 or older, were mostly Christian, and were being hospitalized as inpatients at the Duke University Medical Center or the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center between January 1996 and March 1997.
"Patients' reports that they felt alienated from or unloved by God and attributed their illness to the devil were associated with a 19% to 28% increase in risk of dying during the approximately 2-year follow-up period," the report, which was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said.
One of the authors of the study, Harold G. Koenig, said in a New York Times article about the study, "It's normal to ask God, `Why is this happening to me? Did I do something wrong? Why aren't you responding to my prayers?'"
"All these are normal feelings, but people work through them usually, and people who can't, who get stuck there, they are going to have worse health outcomes," said Koenig, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center.
The report emphasized that its findings were preliminary and insisted that further research was necessary in order to broaden its conclusions about religious struggle and mortality.
It said that "additional research is needed to determine whether these findings, based on a predominantly conservative and mainline Christian sample, are generalizable to other religious groups, including those in which religious struggles may be more normative or take other forms."
The lead author of the study, Bowling Green psychology professor Kenneth I. Pargament, said in the Times article that although religion has been shown to be helpful in aiding recovery, "…it's also clear that religion has a darker side."
"It can be a source of solutions, but it can also be a source of problems," Pargament said in the article. "This study helps lend some balance to the whole field."
In its analysis, the report gave three possible reasons as to the correlation between religious struggle and dying: that religious struggle can negatively affect a patient's physical health, that it is associated with emotional or personality issues related to mortality and that it may result in social alienation in a society in which expression of discomfort with religion is not "normative".
But critics have cited the limited size and depth of the study and the small magnitude of the resulting percentages as warnings not to take the study's conclusions as hard facts just yet, according to the Times report.
David Freedman, a professor of statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, compared the slight increase in risk due to religious struggle with much more serious health risks or demographic differences.
He also called into question the strength of the conclusion based on the researcher's not having been able to locate 152 of the original patients for the follow-up study, the Times article said.
The report, while acknowledging the need for more information, cautioned that its results "suggest that patients who indicate religious struggle during a spiritual history may be at particularly high risk for poor medical outcomes.
"Referral of these patients to clergy to help them work through these issues may ultimately improve clinical outcomes," the report recommended in conclusion; "further research is needed to determine whether interventions that reduce religious struggles might also improve medical prognosis."
|
