Many mourners turn to their spiritual beliefs and traditions when confronted by the death of a loved one. However, prior studies have either focused primarily on the benefits of faith following loss or studied spiritual struggle outside the context of bereavement. Moreover, scales to measure bereavement-related crises of faith and interventions specifically designed for spiritually inclined, di...

BACKGROUND During the last two decades, there have been spiritual/religious interventions in cancer patients to prevent or treat a range of physical problems, including managing chronic pain, coping with the disease, boosting hope and mental health. Although societies are of different faiths and belief systems, what they all share is spirituality. OBJECTIVES Upon this we put forward the hypot...

In 13 years of publishing Palliative and Supportive Care, we have tried to be true to our mission of focusing the scientific and editorial content of the journal on psychiatric, psychosocial, existential and spiritual domains of palliative, and supportive care. I believe we’ve been true to this mission, and somewhat successful in providing an academic publishing home for clinicians and research...

This article highlights different challenging emotional states exhibited by several prominent figures as narrated in the Qur’ān, and approach taken Qur’ān presenting intervening with particular psycho-spiritual processes, which triggered such emotions. Materials method: Anger (Q.12:84; Q.21:87), sadness (Q.12:86; Q.28:7), hopelessness (Q.19:23), trepidation (Q.19:24), self-rumination/condemnati...

Spiritual framing of breast cancer communication may provide a useful strategy for addressing disparate rates of breast cancer mortality among African American women. The efficacy of a spiritually framed breast cancer screening (BCS) message was compared with that of a traditional BCS message. Specifically, 200 African American women were randomly assigned to review either a spiritually framed ...

After Christians, Muslims represent the largest religious grouping in the UK. According to census statistics, there are approximately 1.6 million Muslims in the UK, approximately 54% of who were born outside of the UK. There has been emerging interest in the use of traditional healers by South Asians in the UK. Early studies by Aslam3 and Healey & Aslam4 focused upon health seeking behaviour am...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among spiritual and religious beliefs and practices, social support, and diabetes self-care activities in African Americans with type 2 diabetes, hypothesizing that there would be a positive association. METHOD This cohort study used a cross-sectional design that focused on baseline data from a larger randomized control tria...

PURPOSE To test the efficacy of meaning-centered group psychotherapy (MCGP) to reduce psychological distress and improve spiritual well-being in patients with advanced or terminal cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with advanced cancer (N = 253) were randomly assigned to manualized eight-session interventions of either MCGP or supportive group psychotherapy (SGP). Patients were assessed be...