BACKGROUND HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination are significant determinants of HIV transmission in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), where the adult HIV/AIDS prevalence is 2.5%. T&T is a spiritually-aware society and over 104 religious groups are represented. This religious diversity creates a complex social environment for the transmission of a sexually transmitt...

it seems that a great number of abstract religious concepts in islamic texts are realized, both conceptually and linguistically, through cognitive strategies like metaphor and metonymy. this article tries to study the concept of death in the holy qurۥān, and nahjul-balāgha, the main islamic texts, to see how this (relatively) abstract concept is conceptualized in mind? moreover, what component ...

An explosion of recent research suggests that religious beliefs and behaviors are universal, arise from deep-seated cognitive mechanisms, and were favored by natural selection over human evolutionary history. However, if a propensity towards religious beliefs is a fundamental characteristic of human brains (as both by-product theorists and adaptationists agree), and/or an important ingredient o...

This article examines traditional and modern psychological characterizations of religiousness and spirituality. Three ways in which religiousness and spirituality are polarized by contemporary theorists are examined: organized religion versus personal spirituality; substantive religion versus functional spirituality; and negative religiousness versus positive spirituality. An alternative approa...

in recent decades, foreign policy of middle east countries has been deeply affected by increasing ethnic and religious identities. on the other hand, realist approach has still remained as dominant logic for analyzing of politics in this region. this article based on constructivist approach, analyses the impact of ethnic identity factor on foreign policy of middle east states and emphasizes on ...

The problem of respecting the patients' religious-based decisions seems to play increasingly important role in medical practice. Most probably it happens because: (i) bioethical standards accentuate the principle of the respect for autonomy (the departure form medical paternalism) and (ii) the contacts between people belonging to different religious traditions are becoming more and more frequen...

Background and Objectives: A developing body of evidence has demonstrated the detrimental effects of spirituality and religion on the well-being of patients with cancer. This necessitates the need to explore the content of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V (code 62.89). The present study aimed to identify the spiritual problems of Iranian patients with breast canc...

background and objectives: understanding and meeting the religious needs of patients could lead to the satisfaction and promotion in religious care. this study aimed to explore the patients’ religious expectations of nurses. methods: researchers used a conventional approach to content analysis in this study. eighteen patients (11 men and 7 women) purposefully were selected with maximum variatio...

Religious or spiritual struggles are clinically important to health care chaplains because they are related to poorer health outcomes, involving both mental and physical health problems. Identifying persons experiencing religious struggle poses a challenge for chaplains. One potentially underappreciated means of triaging chaplaincy effort are prayers written in chapel notebooks. We show that re...