PURPOSE Investigations into the role of spirituality in cancer confirm the association of good spiritual well-being with many positive outcomes. This study aimed to evaluate potential changes in spirituality over the course of radiation therapy (RT). PATIENTS AND MATERIALS The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual questionnaire measuring spiritual well-being and quality o...

Evidence is presented that bears on 9 hypotheses about the link between religion or spirituality and mortality, morbidity, disability, or recovery from illness. In healthy participants, there is a strong, consistent, prospective, and often graded reduction in risk of mortality in church/service attenders. This reduction is approximately 25% after adjustment for confounders. Religion or spiritua...

OBJECTIVE It is imperative that research identifies factors related to depression among individuals in substance use treatment, as depression is associated with substance use relapse. Dispositional mindfulness and spirituality may bear an important role in the relationship between depression and substance use. METHOD Using preexisting patient medical records (N = 105), the current study inves...

The link between religion and work is not new. For centuries, people have strived to interpret their work through religious lenses. Recently, however, a significant paradigm shift has occurred. The current view is that spirituality, as opposed to religion, is a better construct for understanding the relationship between the individual and modern pluralistic workplaces. This current perspective,...

Illness and suffering inevitably bring one face to face with the ultimate questions of life. Thus it is no surprise that spirituality is currently the subject of intense study in medicine and allied disciplines. But these studies are floundering for want of a defmition of spirituality, for one cannot research what one cannot clearly defme. With very few exceptions Western investigators have yet...

Religious practices such as prayer represent the most prevalent complementary and alternative therapies in the United States. However, biomedicine has sometimes viewed faith and related religious worldviews as relevant only when they obstruct implementation of scientifically sound biomedical care. Recent efforts to arrive at a new synthesis raise challenges for pediatricians. This article revie...

Faith-based programs are one of the primary treatment options for individuals with substance use disorders. However, there is ambiguity regarding what faith-based programs are, how they differ from secular programs, and how they incorporate religion or spirituality into treatment. Furthermore, though evidence suggests faithbased programs can be as effective as other secular treatments, it is un...

This study is based on interview research with over a hundred creative elders. Their spirituality is explored through their life experiences as re-interpreted in later years. Spirituality is often expressed in non-religious language. They speak of inner empowerments: cultivating self-esteem, harvesting memories, transformative turning points, life-long learning, themes of humor and gratitude, a...

To deal with the suffering caused by childhood cancer, patients and their families use different coping strategies, among which, spirituality appears a way of minimizing possible damage. In this context, the purpose of the present study was to analyze the influence of spirituality in childhood cancer care, involving biopsychosocial aspects of the child, the family, and the health care team faci...

Persistent population aging worldwide is focusing attention on modifiable factors that can improve later life health. There is evidence that religiosity and spirituality are among such factors. Older people tend to have high rates of involvement in religious and/or spiritual endeavors and it is possible that population aging will be associated with increasing prevalence of religious and spiritu...