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  • While the preponderance of evidence thus

    2018-10-30

    While the preponderance of evidence thus far has linked religiosity and health buy stavudine in a positive way, effects are not universally beneficial. Certain aspects and measures of religiosity have been shown to be disadvantages to health. For instance, religion has been found to induce anxiety when it buy stavudine fosters psychologically harmful feelings such as guilt and shame, when it promotes adverse attitudes towards outsiders or when it encourages unquestioning devotion and obedience or beliefs that step toward ‘fundamentalism’ (Chatters, 2000; Nooney & Woodrum, 2002). It is harmful to rely on faith healing as a substitute for medical care (Pargament et al., 2001). Unfavorable interactions with fellow church members were identified in one study as leading to depressive outcomes among clergy and older church-goers (Krause, Ellison, & Wulff, 1998). Religious doubt, or a feeling of uncertainty towards religious beliefs has been associated with negative mental health outcomes (Krause & Wulff, 2004). There may also be causation and sampling issues in studies of religiosity and health that warrant attention. Depressed individuals may drop out of religious activities making samples biased (Maselko, Hayward, Hanlon, Buka, & Meador, 2012). In this case, mental health affects religious activity rather than the other way around. For older populations with high prevalence of disability, attending religious services requires a certain level of physical ability. This might suggest that attendance, which is the single most frequently used measure of religiosity and the one most often linked to health outcomes, could bias associations more so than other measures, like private practice, which may be the activity of choice for chronically ill and those near death (Yeager et al., 2006).
    Potential mechanisms Much of the literature indicating a favorable connection between religiosity, spirituality and health is descriptive in nature, meaning that the research empirically demonstrates a relationship, but the mechanisms driving the relationship are unexplained. This is particularly the case for research that connects religious attendance and mortality (Hummer et al., 2004). Research that does examine mechanisms suggest they are complex and multi-faceted. Yet, recent research is uncovering several that appear to be consistent across cultures and countries: social support; behavior; stress reduction; and psychosocial indicators.
    Future directions Population aging has considerable consequences for global health. Given the potential for religiosity and spirituality to impact on the health of older persons, there is clearly an advantage to public health that can be gained by better understanding the connection between spirituality, religiosity and health in old age across denominational and ritualistic backgrounds and ways of thinking about religious practice. As Hummer et al. (2010) note, future work is needed to determine the strength of the association, the mechanisms through which religiosity and spirituality impact on health across different societies, and the subpopulations for whom religious involvement may or may not be influential. While there has been a burgeoning of scholarly research on religion, spirituality and health, there remain challenges to address, including some that are substantive and some that are methodological (Moberg, 2005; Sloan, Bagiella, & Powell, 1999). Below we identify three contemporary challenges facing the scientific community interested in this topic: longitudinal data; cross-national studies; using health expectancy as an outcome.
    Conclusion Several authors have noted that research on religiosity or spirituality and health can be controversial and critics of religiosity as a determinant of health can be outspoken (Hummer, 2005; Lavretsky, 2010). It can be considered by some to be ‘unscientific’ to consider religiosity among other health determinants, despite evidence cited above. Yet, there does appear to be an intensification of spiritual affectations with aging. At the same time, the global population is getting older and living to increasingly advanced ages. Now for the first time in human history, most people in the world can expect to live into their 60s (World Health Organization, 2015). These facts strongly point toward a requirement and even an obligation on the part of the scientific community to explore the connection between religiosity, spirituality and health in order to more fully understand the determinants of quality of life in old age and in so doing suggest ways for improving human health and the human condition.