As part of a cross-sectional, quantitative study on adjustment factors in long-term breast cancer survival, 52 women were asked to write in their own words how religious and spiritual factors played a part in their understanding of and coping with this illness. A subsample of 39 women responded to this question. The qualitative method of content analysis was used to define meaning units, descri...

Some scholars include changes in spirituality, such as a greater commitment to their religious beliefs or an enhanced understanding of spiritual matters, in the definition of posttraumatic growth; others conclude that questions of spirituality should be excluded from this definition. This article highlights the fundamental difference of religion to other domains of posttraumatic growth because ...

This review discusses the relationships between religion, spirituality, and psychosis. Based on the DSM-IV, we comment on the concept of spiritual and religious problems, which, although they may seem to be psychotic episodes, are actually manifestations of nonpathological spiritual and religious experiences. Studies reporting that hallucinations also occur in the nonclinical population and thu...

This paper focuses on the relationships between schizophrenia and religion, on the basis of a review of literature and the data of an ongoing study about religiousness and spiritual coping conducted among outpatients with chronic schizophrenia. Religion (including both spirituality and religiousness) is salient in the lives of many people suffering from schizophrenia. However, psychiatric resea...

Spirituality plays an integral role in how the individual with cancer and his/her family adapt to the experience of cancer. In this module, spirituality, religion, and spiritual coping are defined and contrasted. The historical role of religion and the current demography of religious affiliation in the African American population are reviewed. The importance of spirituality and religion in the ...

OBJECTIVE We sought to explore the association of religious and spiritual coping with multiple measures of well-being in Latinos caring for older relatives with long-term or permanent disability, either with or without dementia. METHODS Using a multi-dimensional survey instrument, we conducted in-home interviews with 66 predominantly Mexican-American Catholic family caregivers near the US-Mex...

This article examines the reception of the early modern hospital among the indigenous people of the Andes under Spanish colonial rule. During the period covered by this study (sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries), the hospital was conceived primarily as a manifestation of the sovereign’s paternalistic concern for his subjects’ spiritual well being. Hospitals in the Spanish American colonies w...

BACKGROUND The stress associated with residency training may place house officers at risk for poorer health. We sought to determine the level of self-reported health among resident physicians and to ascertain factors that are associated with their reported health. METHODS A questionnaire was administered to house officers in 4 residency programs at a large Midwestern medical center. Self-rate...

Recently, quality of life studies among patients with HIV/AIDS have shown high levels of life satisfaction. Spiritual and religious factors may contribute to these positive outcomes. We interviewed 19 patients with HIV/AIDS in order to understand better the role of religious-spiritual biographies and orientations in quality of life, and found four patterns to describe the ways in which past exp...

The purpose of this study is twofold: to explore the nature of church-based social support, and to see whether support received in religious settings is related to the use of religious coping methods. The data come from a nationwide survey of members of the Presbyterian Church USA. Three dimensions of religious support are examined in detail: emotional support from church members, spiritual sup...