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Trevino: Negative Religious Coping and Suicidal Ideation in Advanced Illness

May 13, 2014
OBJECTIVE:

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between negative religious coping (NRC) and suicidal ideation in patients with advanced cancer, controlling for demographic and disease characteristics and risk and protective factors for suicidal ideation.

METHODS:

Adult patients with advanced cancer (life expectancy ≤6 months) were recruited from seven medical centers in the northeastern and southwestern USA (n = 603). Trained raters verbally administered the...

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Kleinman: From Illness as Culture to Caregiving as Moral Experience

April 18, 2014

Medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman shares his own experiences of caring for his wife in deepening and clarifying his understanding of the moral process of caregiving and explores how we can return a culture of caregiving to medical care.

 

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Balboni: Religious Community Spiritual Support and Associations with Medical Care at the End of Life

April 18, 2014

IMPORTANCE:

Previous studies report associations between medical utilization at the end-of-life (EoL) and religious coping and spiritual support from the medical team. However, the influence of clergy and religious communities on EoL outcomes is unclear.

OBJECTIVE:

To determine whether spiritual support from religious communities influences terminally ill patients' medical care and quality of life (QoL) near death.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS:

A US-based, multisite cohort study of 343 patients with advanced cancer enrolled...

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Risse & Balboni: Shifting Hospital-Hospice Boundaries - Historical Perspectives

April 18, 2014

Social forces have continually framed how hospitals perceive their role in care of the dying. Hospitals were originally conceived as places of hospitality and spiritual care, but by the 18th century illness was an opponent, conquered through science. Medicalization transformed hospitals to places of physical cure and scientific prowess. Death was an institutional liability. Equipped with new technologies, increased public demand, and the establishment of Medicare in 1965, modern hospitals became the most likely place for Americans to die--increasing after the 1940s and spiking in the...

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Rosmarin: Religious Coping Among Psychotic Patients: relevance to suicidality and treatment outcomes

April 18, 2014

Religious coping is very common among individuals with psychosis, however its relevance to symptoms and treatment outcomes remains unclear. We conducted a prospective study in a clinical sample of n=47 psychiatric patients with current/past psychosis receiving partial (day) treatment at McLean Hospital. Subjects completed measures of religious involvement, religious coping and suicidality prior to treatment, and we assessed for psychosis, depression, anxiety and psychological well-being over the course of treatment. Negative religious coping (spiritual struggle) was associated with...

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Peteet: What is the Place of Clinicians' Spiritual Commitments in Psychotherapy?

April 18, 2014

Value neutrality in psychotherapy is widely acknowledged to be a myth, and a majority of US physicians report that their religious faith influences their practice. Most attention to therapists' religious and spiritual commitments has focused on ethical boundaries, transference/countertransference dynamics and questions about how to relate religious and psychological truth. No consensus exists about the legitimate place in psychotherapy of clinicians' differing value commitments. Therapists' virtues are vitally important in psychotherapy, not least in the relational and aspirational...

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