Religion and spirituality: Linkages to physical health.

Evidence is presented that bears on 9 hypotheses about the link between religion or spirituality and mortality, morbidity, disability, or recovery from illness. In healthy participants, there is a strong, consistent, prospective, and often graded reduction in risk of mortality in church/service attenders. This reduction is approximately 25% after adjustment for confounders. Religion or spirituality protects against cardiovascular disease, largely mediated by the healthy lifestyle it encourages. Evidence fails to support a link between depth of religiousness and physical health. In patients, there are consistent failures to support the hypotheses that religion or spirituality slows the progression of cancer or improves recovery from acute illness but some evidence that religion or spirituality impedes recovery from acute illness. The authors conclude that church/service attendance protects healthy people against death. More methodologically sound studies are needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrated Fuzzy DEA-ANFIS to Measure the Success Effect of Human Resource Spirituality

Workplace spirituality has gained attention as it is proven to be a contributor to organizational performance improvement. This paper aims to assess the impact of human resource spirituality on the success of organizational strategic change projects. The success of the projects is measured by the well-known criterion of deviation from the planned budget cost. Data collection is based on a questionnaire survey of 252 personnel in 36 large and medium-scale organizational change projects in power industry. The paper proposes an integrated algorithm of fuzzy data envelopment analysis (FDEA) and adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for measuring the pure effect of human resource spirituality on the success of organizational change projects in the power industry. It also achieves a verified tool capable of addressing complexity, nonlinearity, ambiguity, and fuzziness for measuring spirituality of human resources in the projects. Results show that spirituality of the project team has a significant effect on project success.     

Generativity and spiritual disclosure in close relationships.

This exploratory study examines the link between generativity and an interpersonal aspect of religion and spirituality, spiritual disclosure, in close relationships. Three hundred seventy-eight adults aged 18 to 85 years were asked about their use of spiritual disclosure with close friends, views on their own generativity, questions related to personality characteristics, and level of general self-disclosure. This community sample’s reports on higher levels of spiritual disclosure were tied to higher levels of generativity and general self-disclosure. Spiritual disclosure also predicted unique variance in generativity beyond general self-disclosure, personality, and intrapersonal aspects of religion and spirituality. These findings suggest spiritual disclosure in close relationships is an important part of the religious/spiritual landscape, which merits further study in relation to generativity and other prosocial indices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identity and spirituality: A psychosocial exploration of the sense of spiritual self.

The authors examined the structure and content of adults' sense of spiritual identity by analyzing semistructured interviews with 13 spiritually devout men and 15 devout women, ages 22 to 72. Individuals' responses to the Role-Related Identity Interview (G. T. Sorell, M. J. Montgomery, & N. A. Busch-Rossnagel, 1997b) were content analyzed and rated on the role-related spiritual identity dimensions of role salience and flexibility. Individuals were categorized as spiritually foreclosed, achieved, or in moratorium, on the basis of their motivational, affective, self-evaluative, and behavioral investments in spiritually defined roles and their reflectiveness about and behavioral changes in role-related spiritual identity. Similarities and differences within and between spiritual identity status groups were observed, suggesting a variety of ways that spiritual identity provides a sense of continuity as well as a domain for adult developmental change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reviews of The guide to pastoral counseling and care; Psychotherapy with priests, Protestant clergy, and Catholic religious: A practical guide; and Spirituality, ethics, and relationship in adulthood: Clinical and theoretical explorations.

Reviews the books, The guide to pastoral counseling and care by Gary Ahlskog and Harry Sands (see record 2000-00411-000); Psychotherapy with priests, Protestant clergy, and Catholic religious: A practical guide by Joseph W. Ciarrocchi and Robert J. Wicks (see record 2000-00453-000); and Spirituality, ethics, and relationship in adulthood: Clinical and theoretical explorations by Melvin E. Miller and Alan N. West (see record 2000-05026-000). Some 90 percent of the American public has at least a conventional affiliation with religion, according to national polls over the last 50 years, yet psychology is one of the professions with a level of religious affiliation variously estimated at 30 to 40 percent. So patients for whom religion is or was important in their lives are quite likely to appear in treatment, and most analysts or therapists are unprepared to understand and professionally respond to the issues these patients raise. Recently, the American Psychological Association (APA) has published three broad, well-structured volumes to fill this gap (Richards & Bergin, 1997, 2000; Shafranske, 1996). If you are interested in learning about the life of religious professionals and the communities with which they work, the three books reviewed here deal with areas that the APA publications do not, with varying degrees of effectiveness. They are all recently published by a division of International Universities Press and are a very diverse set. The Guide to Pastoral Counseling and Care and Spirituality, Ethics, and Relationship in Adulthood: Clinical and Theoretical Explorations are both edited collections, and they evince the characteristics of nearly all edited collections: variations in quality, tone, voice, and utility. Psychotherapy With Priests, Protestant Clergy, and Catholic Religious: A Practical Guide also varies in the theoretical stance it takes, shuttling between cognitive–behavioral, interpersonal, and psychoanalytic perspectives. These three books each have something to offer and their own sets of shortcomings. I do not think that they will substitute for the issues covered in the Shafranske (1996) or Richards and Bergin (1997, 2000) handbooks, but they do provide therapists and analysts with specific information that may be relevant to specific clients. Many analysts may have to grit their teeth at times over therapeutic recommendations, especially in the Ciarrocchi and Wicks book, but that is not what these books should be read for. The practicing clinician will find much of use in the first two books, but less in the Miller and West book. The Miller and West book may appeal to a reader interested in a more philosophical approach from a postmodern perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparing spiritual transformations and experiences of profound beauty.

Certain highly emotional experiences have the potential to produce long-lasting and meaningful changes in personality. Two such experiences are spiritual transformations and experiences of profound beauty. However, little is known about the cognitive appraisals or narrative elements involved in such experiences, how they are similar, and how they differ. In a study of emotion-related narratives, these experiences were found to share many features but also differ in their valence. Experiences of profound beauty are almost always positive, but spiritual transformations are both positive and negative. Moreover, spiritual transformations seem to produce long-lasting change, but experiences of profound beauty, although evocative, do not seem to produce long-lasting change. An emotion approach helps to elucidate two understudied but important emotional experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing marital enrichment through spirituality: Efficacy data for prayer focused relationship enhancement.

We examined 393 African American married couples assigned to (a) a culturally sensitive version of a widely disseminated relationship enhancement program (CS-PREP); (b) a similar version of the same program that also included a focus on prayer (PFP condition); or (c) an information-only control condition in which couples received a self-help version of the same program. Husbands averaged 40.5 years of age and wives averaged 38.9 years. We found a significant interaction between intervention and time of assessment, reflecting group differences in linear trends for the three conditions, with the two intervention conditions performing better than the control condition, and PFP producing superior outcomes to CS-PREP only for wives at post and marginally better results at 12-month follow-up. Results support continued exploration of the adjunctive use of prayer in the context of relationship enhancement programs where appropriate to make them more culturally sensitive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging women and depression.

Practicing psychologists will increasingly have the opportunity to include older women with depression among their clients. Research on depression in older women is summarized, including rates of disorder, age of onset, symptom profiles, suicidal behavior, risk factors for depression such as physical health and social inequalities, and protective factors such as spirituality. The empirical literature about treatment of depression in older adults is presented, with special attention to psychotherapeutic approaches. Ways in which information can help mold effective service provision are enumerated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Burnout Prevention Through Personal Growth.

This study evaluated the effects of a burnout prevention program based on insights from transpersonal psychology, notably psychosynthesis. It examined the effects of the program on burnout, happiness, spirituality, emotional intelligence, and relative deprivation with respect to one's career. Thirty-eight individuals, mostly with a background in engineering, participated in a 10-day program over 3 months. A comparison group of similar age and work experience was recruited of colleagues from the same firms and departments. Both groups filled out questionnaires at 3 time points: before the start of the program, immediately after the program (3 months later), and 9 months later. Results showed that a psychosynthesis-based prevention program might be an effective instrument in reducing burnout and enhancing happiness, emotional intelligence, and feelings of spirituality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)