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Behavioural Healthcare

Religiousness may have a positive impact on the quality of life of older adults with schizophrenia, according to new research looking at a large multiracial group of people with schizophrenia living in the community.  The research appears in the September issue of Psychiatric Services, a journal of the American Psychiatric Association.

Previous research has identified the potential benefit of religion in the recovery of persons with schizophrenia, but has not specifically looked at older adults. With an anticipated doubling of the older population with schizophrenia over the next 20 years, the focus of this research was specifically on the potential role of religiousness among older adults.

The study participants included 198 people 55 and older living in the community who developed schizophrenia before age 45 and a randomly selected community comparison group of 113 older adults. Researchers used a seven-item religiousness scale consisting of three dimensions:  salience (the importance of religion in the person’s life), use of religion as a way of coping, and attendance at religious activities.

The researchers found that persons with schizophrenia attended religious activities less frequently than their peers, four times a year compared with once a month, but were equally likely to report that religion was important in their lives and that they used religion as a coping strategy.

The study found that religiousness had independent and positive effects on the participants’ quality of life—that is, it did not simply act as a buffer that prevented psychotic symptoms from eroding a person’s quality of life. In addition, participants who had psychotic symptoms were no more likely to be religious than those without such symptoms.

The authors concluded that religiousness “must be considered along with other therapeutically important agents.” The authors also note that “mental health professionals have been found to be much less religious than their patients, and often they are not aware of their patients’ religious involvement….clinicians may overlook a therapeutically important agent.”

The study authors included Carl I. Cohen, M.D, Carolina Jimenez, MD, and Sukriti Mittal, MD—all affiliated with SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the study was supported by grants from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

I’ve blogged in the past in regard to schizophrenia, faith and suicide:

Interesting research coming out of the US looking at the religiosity of those believers affiliated with church and those not.

Written by Tom Rees of Epiphenom:

One of the big news stories from last year was the revelation that Americans are leaving their churches and religious institutions in droves. They are becoming “unaffiliated”, although there was a lot of debate over what that meant. Are Americans losing religion, or is it simply that they are disillusioned with what they’re being offered?

A new analysis, using data collected over the last three decades by the General Social Survey, sheds some light on this – and also tells us more about just who is religious in the USA these days. Some of the answers are quite surprising.

First a little bit about how they framed the questions on religion in the General Social Survey – it’s not straightforward. First, they asked “what is your religious preference”. Those who said “none” were counted as unaffiliated and weren’t asked any further questions. Those who gave a religious preference were then asked how often they attended religious services and how strong was their faith.

So the data on strength of faith and religious attendance relate only to the dwindling number of people who are affiliated. That’s important to remember.

The new analysis (Kevin Flannelly and colleagues from the Spears Research Institute, New York) confirmed that religious affiliation has dropped off over the years of the survey (since 1972). Now, you might think that this happens because those who are lukewarm in their religion have dropped out. If that were so, then the average ‘religious strength’ of those left in would go up.

In fact, that hasn’t happen. Even those still affiliated to a religious faith go to services less often than they used to. And people still in religion are no more fervent than the religious of 30 years ago.

But there are some interesting differences between the affiliated and the non affiliated. For example, the unaffiliated are, on average, better educated than the affiliated. Yet, among the affiliated, the better-educated actually have stronger faith and go to Church more often.

Perhaps that’s because those educated people who remain in religion do so as an active choice.

It works the opposite way around for income. After adjusting for all the other factors, richer people are more likely to be affiliated. However, among the affiliated, wealth means weaker faith.

The last anomaly is children. Previous research suggests that religious people tend to have more children than the non-religious. And, indeed, this new research shows that the unaffiliated have fewer children than the affiliated. But, among the affiliated, those with stronger religious faith actually have fewer children those whose faith is weaker.

Now, the effect is tiny. However, it does suggest something interesting about the connection between religion and fertility. It suggests that families join (or remain in) a religion for the religious congregations – a social structure in which to raise their children – rather any particular religious zeal.

It’s the classic demonstration of the difference between being religious and being believer.

The Guardian has a poll on at the moment asking:

Is physicist Stephen Hawking right that physics, not God, created the universe?

The results so far are:

81.3% Yes. I believe in gravity, not divinity

18.8% No. God: Hawking ‘not necessary’

Go on hop over and boost the “Hawking not necessary” vote.

On Tuesday President Obama addressed the US nation and informed the world that the war in Iraq was over.

So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.  Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.

In the years since the Iraq War was launched, 2,000 Christians have been murdered and 600,000 have fled Iraq, according to Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. 44% of Iraqi refugees are Christians, and many of the 600,000 Christians who remain are internally displaced persons who have had to flee their homes.

And all of this happened whilst US combat troop levels were high.

I came across an article in which Iraq’s new ambassador to the Vatican Habbeb Mohammed Hadi Ali al-Sadr is quoted as saying:

Terrorist elements were coming from outside of Iraq, and they only added Christians to their hit lists because an act of terror against Christians got more media attention than killing Muslims.

How wicked is that?

So what will happen now to our vulnerable brothers and sisters?

Well, it’s time for our weekly dose of psychobabble and I’m staggered to be able to reveal to you [Jim] that I have uncovered a rarity, namely, a pro-God piece.

It’s only a short article so I’ll just link to this one:

Psychology Today: The Mystery of Happiness – How to live a soulful and spiritual life.

Wonders will never cease.

What follows is a guest-post which appeared on the excellent Scientia et Sapientia blog.

Despite the fact that I’ve already linked to this in a previous post, I requested permission to feature in full on this blog, as this article absolutely ‘nailed it’ and is a timely message that needs to be heard:

Guest blog by Daniel Attaway (Student at Dallas Theological Seminary)

“Bible, Bible, Bible. Everybody is reading the Bible.” This is how one of my seminary profs chose to begin one of his classes and it was slightly shocking because it was satirical. This statement is more or less true about Evangelicals because the Bible is our authority and the written revelation of God (no argument there). Have you ever encouraged someone to read their Bible? Have you ever told them that if they want to know God’s will for their life then they need to read the Bible? Have you ever even given the slightest thought as to what you were asking that person to do?

On a large scale we as Evangelicals claim that if Christians will interpret Scripture using a historical-grammatical method and good exegesis they will arrive at an orthodox interpretation. Is this true? No, and here is one reason why: interpretation never arises from a blank slate, which is what the historical-grammatical approach claims. This approach does not take into account that everyone comes to the text with presuppositions and a predisposition to interpret the text in a certain way. Currently, we find ourselves living in a post-enlightenment world, which states, “I am just concerned with the data.” So we look at the original language, the grammatical structure, and the cultural setting for our interpretation. This method is not all-together wrong or incorrect, but is it complete?

Here is how this scenario plays out… Suppose the head pastor of an evangelical church wants to do a sermon on David and Goliath. He spends the week leading up to Sunday studying the cultural background, geography, history of the Philistine/Israelite controversy, and the fight between David and Goliath. What will likely happen is after this information has been given, the pastor will say, “Here is how you slay the giants in your life,” and he goes off on that subject. Is that a poor application to make? Maybe not, but is the interpretation whole? Is that reading distinctively Christian? I submit that it is not because it is not informed by the Christ event, namely the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Stopping at the “facing your giants” interpretation seems to be what Dr. Christian Smith calls “Therapeutic-Moralistic Deism.” So what is the distinctively Christian reading? Tim Keller gave a good answer when he said, “Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.”

So what is the alternative? A Christocentric, orthodox informed lens through which we read and interpret the Scriptures. The early church interpreted Scripture through the lens of what had been passed down to them, known as the “rule of faith.” A simple definition of the rule of faith is apostolic, orthodox teaching. Irenaeus was a mainstream defender of the Christian faith against heretical teaching and he wrote that the one standard of correct interpretation is the rule of faith, which has been preserved in the church in the apostolic succession. So what is the lens? What should inform our interpretation? Orthodoxy. What is distinctively Christian is our starting point and that informs our interpretation.

In conclusion, we should not seek to read Scripture as anyone other than a Christian. You should not want to read the Old Testament like a Jew. You are not Jewish! You are Christian. The call is that we no longer place ourselves at the center of the Scriptures and determine “what they have to say to me,” but to read the Scriptures through the lens of orthodoxy and what is distinctively Christian. Is the Bible about what we are to do, or about what God has done? I believe that we have taught our people to read the Bible. We have even taught them to read it correctly with a historical-grammatical approach. But have we taught them how to read it Christianly? Don’t get me wrong, the historical-grammatical approach to interpretation is beneficial, but I do not believe it is complete. My fear along with others is that we are encouraging people to go home and read their Bibles in isolation and we give them no lens through which to do so. Sadly, the average layperson does not view God as Trinitarian, nor do they read the Scriptures through a  Christocentric lens. This is raising up a multitude of people who view the Bible as their “roadmap to life,” and have little to no knowledge concerning historic Christian orthodoxy. This, among other things has lead many to predict an evangelical collapse. Do you agree or do you think orthodoxy as a starting point is ill conceived?

Four more fabulous blog posts for you. The Christian blogosphere is on fire today, so make sure you read these as they’re worth the time:

Scientia et Sapientia – Are You Reading the Bible Wrong?

Parchment and Pen – Beware of “Professional Weaker Brethren”

Onesimus Online – The Trinity in Evangelical and Orthodox Perspectives

Roger E Olsen – God and evil

I heartily enjoyed this blog post written by Vincent, hailing from the Orthodox tradition, and rebuffing the myth of a “golden age” of the Church:

The Golden Age of the Church – Franciscan Mafia

There wasn’t one.

This is a myth and it is something often curiously thrown in the face of Orthodox Christians as a supposed “refutation” of our claims regarding the Apostolic Faith.

We don’t believe there was ever a “golden age” of the Church.

Sure, it would’ve been interesting to live during the thousand-or-so years’ reign of Byzantium, but that was one of the most violent eras of the Church! Yes, Christianity was the State religion of the time, and yes the emperors (well, many of them) were God-fearing and helped push the agenda of the Faith and preserve, protect and maintain peace throughout the empire through the Church and Her influence, but there were far more problems than can easily be recounted.

Those ignorant of this time period and indeed of the Orthodox Faith in general like to suggest that our claims regarding Apostolic succession, the Ecumenical Councils and the conciliar view of Ecclesiology (just as examples) are somehow rendered moot by the fact that the Church was essentially in turmoil and utter chaos from the very beginning. The reality is, however, that this is all part and parcel of not only our Theology of the Church but also why we believe the way we do regarding everything from Tradition to Icons.

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Finally resumed reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s seminal work, ‘A History of Christianity’ after my month long Tom Wright excursion.

Most recent previous post on ‘A History of Christianity’ can be found here.

Unfortunately the snippet below covers the darker period of Western Christianity, circa 13-15th Century:

Pages 419-420:

This constant exposition of the Passion had an unfortunate side effect. To dwell on Christ’s sufferings was liable to make worshippers turn their attention to those whom the Bible narrative principally blamed for causing the pain: the Jews. Franciscans were not slow to make the connection explicit, and in doing so, they complicated and darkened the already tense relationship bewteen Jews and Christians.

Augustine of Hippo had declared that God had allowed the Jews to survive all the disasters in their history to act as a sign and a warning to Christians. They should therefore be allowed to continue their community life within the Christian world, although without the full privileges of citizenship which Christians enjoyed: God only intended them to be converted en masse when he chose to bring the world to an end. So Jews continued to be the only non-Christian community formally tolerated in the Christian West, but their position was always fragile, and they were excluded from positions of power or mainstream wealth-creating activities. One result was that a significant number turned to money-lending at interest (usury), an activity which, thanks to half-understood prohibitions in the Tanakh, the Church prohibited to Christians. That trade could bring wealth to Jews, but certainly not popularity.

It is true that Franciscans had not pioneered or singly-handedly invented the link between Jews and the Passion. The Western liturgy of Holy Week had been celebrating and intensifying the drama of Good Friday, the day of Jesus’s death, for at least a century before their first appearance, and others had drawn conclusions from the emotion of the liturgical experience. Yet the tragedy remains: the heirs of the apostle of love, Francis, were among the chief sustainers of the growing hatred of Jews in medieval Western Europe. It was in this atmosphere that England pioneered Western Europe’s first mass expulsion of Jews when in 1289, Edward I’s Parliament refused to help the King out of his war debts unless he rid the realm of all Jews; other rulers followed suit later.

Such anti-Semitic ill-will continued to be balanced, in the untidy fashion of human affairs and with Augustine’s lukewarm encouragement, by perfectly cordial or straightforward relations between Jews and Christians, but the impulse to harass or persecute Jews became a persistent feature of Western Christianity which it has only now properly confronted in the wake of terrible events in the twentieth century. Jews were not the only group to be scapegoated: we have already noted the way that in bad times, lepers and homosexuals could also be seen as conspiring against Christian society.

The early fourteenth century added a news set of conspirators: Satan and his agents on earth, witches. Pope John XXII, a man much exercised by enemies and disruptors of the Church like the spiritual Franciscan, crystallized a good deal of academic debate about magic and witchcraft which had been building up during the previous half-century. In 1320 he commissioned a team of theological experts to consider whether certain specific cases of malicious conjuring could be considered heresy, a controversial proposition generally previously denied by theologians, who had tended to treat magic, spells and meetings with the Devil as devilish illusions without substance. In the wake of the Pope’s commission, six or seven years later he issued a bull, Super illius specula, which now proclaimed that any magical practices or contracts with demons were by their nature heretical and therefore came within the competence of inquisitions. This was one of those ideas which bide their time; for the moment witches were not much troubled by the Church’s discipline, but more than a century later, with the aid of new publicists fired by their own obsessions, the Western Church and its Protestant successors were to initiate more than two centuries of active witch persecution.

OK that was a very dark period.

Daphne Anson:

They’re really pulling out all the stops these days – those perverse Christians who seem to detest the existence of Israel. Last week the Quakers’ headquarters in Manchester hosted both Israel-basher Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz and – like so many Christian places of worship up and down the British Isles – Rod Cox’s notorious Israel-demonising exhibition of children’s drawings from Gaza. “Greenbelt”, a four-day musical festival at Cheltenham Racecourse that began this past weekend, organised by Christian groups with a pro-Palestinian agenda including Christian Aid and – fresh from their June call to boycott produce from “illegal” West Bank settlements – the Methodists, asks the 12,800 people attending to “confront the stark contrast” between the festival and the “day-to-day life” of Gazans.

Replacement theology and Successionism is undermining Israel, and many Christians have been seduced by Naim Ateek, founder of the Palestinian Christian organisation Sabeel, who denies that the “Old Testament” justifies Zionism and has made conflicting statements regarding Israel’s right to exist. Churches have produced one-sided reports about the situation in the Middle East that depict Hamas as a charitable organisation, completely overlooking its terrorist credentials and its antisemitic genocidal Charter. There’s even a tendency in some quarters to twist reality for political purposes and depict Jesus as a Palestinian rather than as a Judean. In London both the Bloomsbury Baptist Church and St James’s Church, Piccadilly, hold carol services in conjunction with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign with the words to well-known carols altered to demonise Israel.

And so on.

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