In a first ever comprehensive analysis of impact of religion and spirituality on a caner patient’s health, researchers have found that there is a strong association between patients’ religious and spiritual beliefs and their mental, social and physical well-being.
The analysis of all published studies on the topic involving over 44,000 patients has indicated that there is a link between religion and spirituality and patients’ health, but there was wide variability among studies regarding how different dimensions of religion and spirituality relate to different aspects of health.
In a three-pronged approach, researchers investigated physical health, mental health and social health of patients and the impact that religious and spiritual feelings have on them.
As far as physical health is concerned, patients who reported having greater overall religiousness and spirituality also reported better physical health, greater ability to perform their usual daily tasks, and fewer physical symptoms of cancer and treatment.
Researchers revealed that this strong association was particular strong in cases where patients experienced greater emotional aspects of religion and spirituality, including a sense of meaning and purpose in life as well as a connection to a source larger than oneself.
Lead author Heather Jim, PhD, of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa noted that patients who reported greater cognitive aspects of religion and spirituality, such as the ability to integrate the cancer into their religious or spiritual beliefs, also reported better physical health; however, physical health was not related to behavioral aspects of religion and spirituality, such as church attendance, prayer, or meditation.
In the second analysis that looked at patients’ mental health, researchers found that emotional aspects of religion and spirituality were more strongly associated with positive mental health than behavioral or cognitive aspects of religion and spirituality.
“Spiritual well- being was, unsurprisingly, associated with less anxiety, depression, or distress,” said lead author John Salsman, PhD, who conducted the research while at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, but is now at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem.
As far as social health of patients is concerned, religion and spirituality, as well as each of its dimensions, had modest but reliable impact. Patients with stronger spiritual well-being, more benign images of God or stronger beliefs reported better social health.
There have been quite a few previous studies involving literature reviews on the impact of religion and spirituality on cancer patients’ health, but none have taken such thorough and painstaking efforts to analyze the data in such detail.
Researchers suggest that future research should focus on how relationships between religious or spiritual involvement and health change over time, and whether support services designed to enhance particular aspects of religion and spirituality in interested patients might help improve their well-being.
The study and its findings have been published in CANCER.
