Religion and Psychology

Some researchers in the field of ageing claim that significant extension of the human lifespan will be possible in the near future. While many of these researchers have assumed that the community will welcome this technology, there has been very little research on community attitudes to life extension. This paper presents the results of an in-depth qualitative study of community attitudes to life extension across age groups and religious boundaries.

This study attempts to identify some of the signs of ineffective religious involvement in coping. Drawing from a process/integration model of efficacious coping, three broad types of religious warning signs were defined and 11 subscales were developed. These subscales were administered to a group of Roman Catholic church members and two groups of college undergraduates who had experienced different types of negative life events in the past two years.

Agonias, meaning "the agonies," is a culture-specific somatic phenomenon experienced by Azorean immigrants. Although the community's health providers conceptualize agonias as an "anxiety disorder," interviews with community members revealed a more complex phenomenon. For them, agonias is a somatomoral experience--where the somatic, the social, the religious and the moral are inextricably linked.

Since the late 1970s when the first cases of HIV/AIDS were identified in Africa, there has been an upsurge of research on the epidemic. Although religious involvement may be germane to AIDS protective and risk behavior, few of these studies deal with religion and AIDS. This article contributes to the discourse on religion and health in Africa by analysing the interrelationship between religion and AIDS behavior in Ghana, a West African country at the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, and one where religious activities are more pronounced.

The purpose of this study was to examine the religious belief of the elderly women in Hong Kong and how their life satisfaction and depressive symptoms were related to various dimensions of religiosity. Data based on a community sample of older women (N = 180, mean age = 74.2 years) indicated that majority of them (56.7%) reported beliefs in folk religion and ancestor worship. The Catholics and Buddhists appeared to enjoy a better mental health status than did the Protestants, which seemed to be mediated by better family supports and physical health condition.

Evidence supporting a relationship between religion and physical health has increased substantially in the recent past. One possible explanation for this relationship that has not received much attention in the literature is that health care utilization may differ by religious involvement or religious denomination. A nationally representative sample of older adults was used to estimate the effects of religious salience and denomination on six different types of preventative health care (i.e.

OBJECTIVE: To describe spiritually augmented cognitive behaviour therapy (SACBT) and its applications. METHODS: The background for the need to incorporate spirituality into therapy is considered, and SACBT as a therapy for sustaining mental health and functional recovery is described. Cognitive and behavioural components are considered, including the use of existential techniques in discovering meaning. The use of meditation and the validation and incorporation of the appropriate belief system of patients into their treatment are described.

This study investigated mental health professionals' assessment of the pathognomonic significance of religious beliefs. A total of 110 participants reviewed 3 vignettes depicting individuals possessing the religious beliefs associated with Catholicism, Mormonism, and Nation of Islam. The religious beliefs of the individuals in the vignettes were identified as either being integral to a religious tradition or not and also as either resulting in a threat to harm another or not.

Your patient is a Catholic, and you are not. How can you be sensitive to the patient's spiritual needs? How do Catholics think about health and illness? What kind of spiritual resources do they draw upon when facing a health crisis?

Jesuit-run Marian Congregations proliferated in 1930s Spain. Drawing on literature produced for their members, this article demonstrates how gendered understandings were fundamental to the congregations' symbolic delineation of an uncontaminated Catholic space. Visions of an incorrupt male elite abound, reinforcing the Jesuits' educational mission among future leaders and opinion-formers. In contrast, the purity of women and children was seen as a sign of society's moral health. Modesty was the quintessential female virtue.