Religious belief and health
Religious beliefs are not always a source of comfort during iii health:
they may actually increase your risk of dying. A study of nearly
600 older hospital patients, 95 percent of whom were Christian, showed negative
feelings evoked by religious beliefs sometimes predicted mortality.
Key factors that increased the risk of death were feelings of being
"abandoned or punished" by God, "believing the devil caused the illness", or
"feeling abandoned by one’s faith community", the study by researchers at Duke
University Medical Centre and Bowling Green State University showed.
"The study reminds us that religion... can, at times, be a source of
problems in it self, "says lead author Kenneth Pargament.
Several studies have demonstrated a reduced risk of death among those who
attend church regularly, but the new research, published in today’s Archives of
Internal Medicine, is the first to examine negative aspects of
religiousness. Patients who reported feeling alienated from God
or who blamed the devil had a 19 to 28 percent increased risk of dying during
the following two years, say the researchers, who found no association between
gender, race, diagnosis, brain function, independence, depression, or quality of
life with mortality. Duke University’s Dr Harold Koenig said
anger and frustration were normal grief responses when people discovered health
problems. Those who were religious and were able to reconnect with God and their
spiritual feeling could use those resources for support. But those who continued
to experience conflict could be making their health worse.
"Those people are in trouble and doctors need to know about it," he said.
"Doctors need to be assessing their patients for these kinds of feelings."
Referral to clergy may then be helpful. He said more than
two-thirds of medical schools in the United States had courses that trained
students on how to take a patient’s spiritual history, a trend that recognized
the growing body of evidence about the mind-body connection. Which of the following statements about the new research is NOT ture
A．It is the first to examine negative aspects of religiousness. B．It shows that religion is sometimes a source of problems. C．It suggests that doctors should take the patients’ spiritual history into account. D．It proves that religious belief is the greatest factor influencing patients’ mortality.