Religious beliefs may be associated with better health in cancer patients

Yet a new study suggests that cancer patients may be better able to cope with the help of religion or spiritual values.

“Patients who usually are not spiritual or religious can…” However, much depended on how someone actually experienced their religion, with those whose faith was emotionally satisfying and supportive faring better than those who believed in an angry and judgmental God.

An analysis was also done of the patients’ abilities to maintain relationships and social roles while having cancer.

For the impact of spirituality on physical health, the studies included more than 32,000 adult cancer patients with a range of cancer types and stages.

“A Meta-analytic Review of Religious or Spiritual Involvement and Social Health among Cancer Patients”.

The second analysis focused on patients’ mental health, and here the researchers found that the emotional aspects of belief were more strongly correlated with better mental health than the behavioral or cognitive manifestations of religion or spirituality.

Spirituality may enhance positive emotion such as love, forgiveness, and comfort and reduce stress, she added.

“Also, greater levels of spiritual distress and a sense of disconnectedness with God or a religious community was associated with greater psychological distress or poorer emotional well-being”, said Salsman, now at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem. “However, we can’t say for sure that religion/spirituality causes better perceived health”.

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.

Adversely, this new research also shows that those discontent with religion, with a high disapproval towards it, fanatics, and also those that are fanatic endorsers of one religion had completely opposite views on their health.

“Spiritual well-being was associated with less anxiety, depression or distress”, says John Salsman from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and lead study author, in the published paper. The results showed that, no matter how varied the conditions and the subjects, religious belief played a key role in many cases, and was nearly completely linked to better health.

The third analysis found a link between spirituality/religion and social well-being. But it is still not certain whether religiousness or spirituality causes symptom relief or better physical function during cancer treatment, he said. A patient who believes in a benevolent God has a better attitude about coping with treatments than a patient who believes that the cancer is a form of punishment from the higher being.

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