eChurch Christian Blog

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:

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.

We haven’t done any psychobabble for a little while and although I’ve not received any complaints, I suspect this must have been a sad and grevious loss to your lives.

In order to redress this appalling and atrocious neglect I have an interesting piece for you.

This piece written by Dr. Stephen Diamond looks at demon possession and the recent growth in exorcisms from a psychiatric perspective.

Obviously Dr. Diamond does not view demon possession as a valid phenomena and as usual for this discipline, this piece throws up more questions than it answers.

Interestingly it’s almost as if demon possession/ exorcism presents a threat or challenge to psychiatry / psychology itself.

Still this is an interesting piece and worth a read. I’m going to feature the conclusion of the piece below (which is on page 2) and you can view page one of the piece here.

Enjoy:

Despite its continued prevalence in varying forms, most psychotherapy does not adequately treat the possession syndrome. For some bedeviled individuals, the traditional ritual of exorcism or myth of “demonic possession” serves to make more sense of their suffering than the scientific, secular, biochemical explanations and cognitive-behavioral theories proffered these days by conventional mainstream psychiatry and psychology. If psychotherapy as a healing of the soul (not just the mind) is to survive and thrive into the next century, our obsession with cognition, behavior, genetics, neurology and biochemistry must be counterbalanced by the inclusion of the spiritual and depth psychological dimension of human existence.

The truth is, most psychotherapy patients need far more than what pharmaceutical intervention and/or cognitive therapy–the two most popular so-called “evidence-based” or empirically supported modalities today–can provide. They need and deserve support and accompaniment through their painful, frightening, disorienting, perilous spiritual or existential crises, their “dark night of the soul.” They need a psychologically meaningful method to confront their metaphorical devils and demons, their repressed anger or rage, and the existential reality of evil. They need a secular spiritual psychotherapy willing to ask the right questions. In a time where so many have lost faith in God, rejected organized religion, yet still seek something transpersonal to believe in, something spiritual, something transcendental or supernatural, the notion of demonic possession has diabolically tempting appeal. For to believe that the Devil and his demons can take possession of one’s body, mind and soul is to find evidence also of God’s existence. And to make meaning from meaninglessness. This “will to meaning,” as existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl called it, is a fundamental human drive, one which abhors a meaningless “existential vacuum.” For those who have lost faith, the myth of demonic possession can–in addtion to providing a possibility of attributing responsibility for our darkest, most despicable or spiritually unacceptable emotions, impulses and evil deeds to something or someone other than ourselves– paradoxically provide a path back to God, since God and the Devil are but two sides of the same spiritual coin. Unless psychology can provide a better or at least equally satisfying, meaningful alternate explanation of the possession syndrome–and a more effective way to deal with it– belief in demonic possession and the practice of exorcism are bound to escalate.

I wondered why the BBC website was suddenly posing the question as to the relevance of a doctor’s religion and now I know why.

Professor Clive Seale has published some fascinating and quite disturbing research today over at the Journal of Medical Ethics which appears to confirm that atheist or agnostic doctors are twice as likely to take decisions that might shorten the life of somebody who is terminally ill as doctors who are deeply religious.

I can only access the Abstract free of charge, so here it is:

Background and Aims The prevalence of religious faith among doctors and its relationship with decision-making in end-of-life care is not well documented. The impact of ethnic differences on this is also poorly understood. This study compares ethnicity and religious faith in the medical and general UK populations, and reports on their associations with ethically controversial decisions taken when providing care to dying patients.

Method A postal survey of 3733 UK medical practitioners, of whom 2923 reported on the care of their last patient who died.

Findings Specialists in care of the elderly were somewhat more likely to be Hindu or Muslim than other doctors; palliative care specialists were somewhat more likely to be Christian, religious and ‘white’ than others. Ethnicity was largely unrelated to rates of reporting ethically controversial decisions. Independently of speciality, doctors who described themselves as non-religious were more likely than others to report having given continuous deep sedation until death, having taken decisions they expected or partly intended to end life, and to have discussed these decisions with patients judged to have the capacity to participate in discussions. Speciality was independently related to wide variations in the reporting of decisions taken with some intent to end life, with doctors in ‘other hospital’ specialities being almost 10 times as likely to report this when compared with palliative medicine specialists, regardless of religious faith.

Conclusions Greater acknowledgement of the relationship of doctors’ values with clinical decision-making is advocated.

And the moral of the story is if you or a loved one is facing an “end-of-life” situation, it may be prudent to find out your doctor’s views were on religious matters, as there appears to be a strong link between religious belief (or lack thereof) and clinical decision making.

UPDATE: More at the BBC, here and here (Radio interview with Prof. Clive Seal & Baroness Finlay)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bish Nick Baines has now blogged on this.

AND ANOTHER: Michael Merrick of Outside In has also blogged this one in the style of a good ol’ fashioned BBC fisking.

Just thought I’d share two interesting articles with you, both covering fairly controversial issues.

The first by Roger Olsen looks at Biblical “innerancy”, or more specifically, the term “innerancy” itself:

A common response to my rejection of the term “inerrancy” is “If the Bible contains a single error, how can we know it is God’s Word?”

First, let me say again: It is the TERM “inerrancy” that I reject, not the authority or trustworthiness of Scripture.  AND every inerrantist I know or have read admits there are errors in Scripture as we have it today.  Only the original autographs were inerrant in the strictest sense.  What I want is an authoritative Bible that actually exists and not one that used to exist!

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The second by John Farrell over at the Guardian covers evolution and he notes some rather intriguing facts relating to Pope Pius X11 and John Paul II in this regard:

More and more these days it seems like evolution is turning into a litmus test with only two possible results. If you accept evolution, creationists consider you a heretic. If you question evolution, Darwinists denounce you as a moron. But history shows that a qualified acceptance of evolution was, from the moment Darwin published his Origin of Species, a default position for many who were open to the theory, even when they were deeply disturbed by it.

Sixty years ago the controversial pope Pius XII, for example, made an accommodation with evolution the official position of the Catholic Church, when he wrote in his encyclical Humani Generis, that the scientific investigation of the material origins of the human body was perfectly legitimate, provided Catholic theologians kept in mind that the soul was to be considered always the direct creation of God.

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