Using ethnographic techniques, I studied the religious and spiritual aspects of health care at the N.R.I. Academy of the Sciences in Chinakakani, Andhra Pradesh, India, to gain perspectives on how culture influences people’s beliefs about health. It became apparent that “cultural customs” accounted for people’s similar beliefs concerning recovery from disease and injury, irrespective of their d...

Purpose Physicians’ spiritual and religious identities, beliefs, and practices are beginning to be explored. The objective of this study was to gather descriptive information about personal religion and spirituality from a random sample of academic American pediatricians and to compare this information with similar data from the public. Method In 2005, a Web-based survey of a random sample of 2...

BACKGROUND AND AIM Spiritual life can be defined as the search for personal contact with the transcendent. Careful assessment of spiritual life can help to value its importance to cancer patients from the moment of their diagnosis. METHODS This is a cross-sectional study. Two hundred fifty-seven patients undergoing cancer treatment filled in the validated Italian version of the Systems of Bel...

Background: Spirituality is one of the most important factors that can contribute to the recovery of substanceuse disorder (SUD). The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of the religious-spiritual grouptherapy on the spiritual health and the quality of life in methadone-treated patients.Methods: <s...

Well, it ’s finally happened. I’ve been attacked in the scientific literature ~Salander, 2006!. Well, just to clarify, it wasn’t a personal attack, but rather an attack of the highest and most noble order: an attack on the scientific rigor of the conceptual underpinnings of my recent work on meaning and spirituality in advanced cancer patients ~e.g., Breitbart, 2002!. To be honest, and a bit le...

background and purpose: cancer is associated with significant changes in the lifestyle of patients. spiritual well-being has been shown to be an inherent element of health, quality of life, increased survival rate, and enhanced adaptability of cancer patients with the disease. this study aimed to evaluate the spiritual health of cancer patients and their nurses. methods: this descriptive, corre...

One possible approach to prevention of suicide attempts is to encourage help-seeking among individuals at risk. We assessed whether different forms of treatment were associated with lower odds of a suicide attempt in a diverse group of 388 lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults aged 18-59, sampled from New York City venues. Of individuals who attempted suicide, 23% sought mental health or medi...

OBJECTIVE Mental health professionals are increasingly aware of the need to incorporate a patient's religious and spiritual beliefs into mental health assessments and treatment plans. Recent changes in assessment and treatment guidelines in the US have resulted in corresponding curricular changes, with at least 16 US psychiatric residency programs now offering formal training in religious and s...

This qualitative study explores the religious development and spiritual formation of African American gay men living with AIDS. In response to an in-depth interviewing approach, 10 men described their experiences of church participation. The participants' data reveal their religious initiation and participation as well as their need to extinguish their affiliation with the black church as a res...