Spirituality, Religion and Suicide: French Findings
The association between spirituality and health is an emerging area of research, relatively little explored in Europe. Spirituality and religiousness are associated with lower rates of physical, mental and substance use disorders and with how patients cop
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Spirituality, Religion and Suicide: French Findings Olfa Helene Mandhouj
Although religion has played a role in human life for over 500,000 years, it is the oldest form of medical practice (Miller, 1999; Sulmasy, 2009), Today it has become “a taboo subject”, most often avoided by practitioners. Before the development of medicine, people were cared for by healers. These included consulting spiritual leaders such as “Curandero and curandera” in Mexico, or going to a place of pilgrimage such as “Lourdes” or “Chimayo” (Miller, 1999). Shamans were the traditional healers of the tribes. Their care consisted in some religious rituals (Sulmasy, 2009). In many cultures, a holistic view of the human being remains predominant, such as the case of Chinese médicine. The émergence of modern experimental medicine in the nineteenth century was followed by the abandonment of the vitalism and an explicit separation between science and religion. The 1970s were characterized by the development of “Alternative Medicine” and since the 1990s, researches on the relationship between medicine and spirituality had considerably increased. Since the 1990s, both the number of studies about the relationship between religion and health, and the methodological quality of these studies have largely increased. In the last 20 years, numerous studies have been published on the relationship between spirituality and health in various disciplines such as medicine, nursing, sociology, psychology, theology, etc. Over the last decades, the concept of health has expanded far beyond the notion of the absence of a biological disease. Health is strongly influenced by individual culture, intimate personal relationships, social context, the quality of social relationships, and philosophical ideas, including the meaning it gives to life.
O.H. Mandhouj (&) Psychiatric Hospital “Les Pervenches” Fontenay-Aux-Roses, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 U. Kumar (ed.), Handbook of Suicidal Behaviour, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4816-6_24
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O.H. Mandhouj
Many individuals suffering from psychological, emotional, stressful life events turn to religion in order to find comfort, hope and meaning in their lives. This refuge in religion can help some people but can also increase the psychological suffering of some vulnerable people. Indeed, religious beliefs, coupled with a rigid normative moral framework, can, for some people, increase their anxiety and sense of guilt. Pargament (1997) suggested that religious coping potentially serves several purposes: spiritual (meaning, purpose, hope), self-development, resolve (self-efficacy), sharing (closeness, community connectedness) and restraint (keeping emotion and behaviour under control). SR coping can be positive (e.g. praying for relieving anxiety, stop drinking alcohol due to religious considerations, etc.) or negative (e.g. thinking to be abandoned by God, feeling anxious after reading scriptures, etc.). The association between spirituality and health is an emerging area
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