Events of the past decade, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, clergy sexual abuse scandals, high-profile violence against women and minority groups, and ongoing combat in many areas of the world have focused attention on the prevalence and impact of traumatic violent events. Simultaneously, people’s frequent “turn to religion” (Schuster et al., 2007) after such events has raised m...

Epidemiologists, like many scientists, tend to become specialized and focused on a particular disease, even though behavioral risk factors such as physical activity have effects across many diseases. This commentary is a personal reflection by an epidemiologist on the shortcomings of this disease-oriented approach to prevention.

This is a review of the literature on the role of religion in the promotion of health, the prevention of violence and the rehabilitation of individuals involved in criminal activities. Research was conducted in the Medline through PubMed, Lilacs, Scopus, Social Index with full text, Sociological abstracts and Social services abstracts databases. Twenty-nine essays in Portuguese, English and Spa...

There is a long-standing adage in Britain which, albeit brief, nonetheless illuminates aspects of the nation's culture. It states that there are two subjects that should not be raised in polite company and are likely to alienate strangers and even estrange friends: the topics of politics and religion. For those unfamiliar with British culture, this may suggest a disinterest in both politics and...

A meta-analysis was performed in an attempt to clarify the proposed relationship between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Specific focus was given to the issue of definition, namely, whether differences in researchers’ conceptualizations of religiosity and mental health could account for the various contradictory findings by psychologists of religion. Analysis of 34 studies conducted d...

A decade of work by Bergin and others is reviewed and synthesized concerning two broad issues: (a) the role of values in psychotherapy and (b) the relation of religion to mental health. Trends have changed and there is now more professional support for addressing values issues in treatment. There is also more openness to the healthy potentialities of religious involvement, and therapists themse...

The analysis of 42 research studies investigating the role of religion in health, in which 126,000 people were interviewed, has established that religious involvement was helpful in the prevention of specific medical problems such as cancer, heart disease and mental illness. For example, the religious have lower blood pressure than the non-religious, but this is the first study to examine so co...