Asian Accomodations

Many concerns about religion-and-health are valid and help to frame the conversation. However, it is easy to take some points too far, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Let’s start with the extreme case, which anyone with common sense would agree is inappropriate: Doctors should not coerce patients in the area of religion, and any kinds of interventions should always be patient-centered. This is widely accepted within the field of religion-and-health. However, this does not mean that there is no role for doctors praying with patients.

The majority of patients in most studies as many as 78 percent indicate that they would like their physicians to pray with them, especially if they are religious and if they are in a situation of high stress. Many patients, however, are afraid to ask their doctors because they are afraid such a request would offend the doctor.

So what can be done? The physician should take a brief spiritual history and find out if the patient is religious. If so, and if the physician is open to praying with patients, he or she could inform the patient that if the patient ever wanted this, then the patient should simply ask. This way, the patient is left to initiate the request and there is no coercion. These things can be done sensibly.

Are studies in religion-and-health based on good scientific evidence? Yes. There are literally hundreds of cross-sectional studies, prospective studies and clinical trials that have demonstrated significant positive associations.

Some of these studies have been done poorly, but what about the hundreds that have been done well and have still reported positive findings? These studies have been published in some of the best peer-reviewed journals in the psychosocial sciences. Other scientists have reviewed the methods of these studies and given approval are they all deluded?

Of course, it is not religion by itself through some supernatural process that is responsible for the religion-health relationship. Religion affects health by enhancing social support, improving health behaviors, and conveying hope and optimism in the face of the most difficult of life’s challenges. These are the mechanisms by which religion has its effects. They explain the religion-health relationship, and they by no means explain away the relationship.

Doctors cannot continue to ignore the powerful role that religious beliefs play in coping with illness, in medical decision-making and possibly in health outcomes. This does not mean that doctors should take on religion, provide religious counseling or impose their religious beliefs on patients. It does mean, however, that they should begin communicating with their patients about religious beliefs that may influence the patients’ medical care, show respect for those beliefs, and get patients connected to clergy who can address spiritual needs if they are present.

Is it important to study the health implications of religion? Yes, depending on what the research is designed to accomplish. If the research is designed to prove that prayer works in some supernatural way or that God exists or that angels are real, then such research does indeed do religion a disservice. However, 95 percent of the research being done in this field is not trying to do that. Instead, this research is trying to understand the effects of devout religious belief and practice on the health of people, the prevention of disease and the outcome of illness by understandable scientific pathways.

By documenting the positive effects as well as negative effects that religion can have, does this not help religions accomplish what most are seeking to do help people live better and fuller lives?

Dr. Richard P. Sloan and others have written about the role of prayer in medicine with a mixture of fact and fiction. I have tried to point out which is the fact and which is the fiction. Science, medicine and religion should work hand in hand, complementing each other in helping the whole person to thrive. This is good for religion and good for medicine.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, associate professor of medicine and co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. He is also the publisher/editor in chief of Science & Theology News. Dnal P. O’Mathna is Lecturer in Health Care Ethics at the School of Nursing at Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland. He is the coauthor of Alternative Medicine: The Christian Handbook, to be released by Zondervan in a revised and expanded edition in late 2006. This article was written for Science & Theology News.