Religious coping

1
Religious coping
2
The religious dimension of coping

• Crises can be viewed through a spiritual lens as
  threats, challenges, losses, or opportunities for
  the growth of whatever the individual may hold
  sacred
• In a survey of a national sample of Americans
  shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Schuster et al.
  (2001) found that 90 reportedly turned to their
  religion for solace and support
• Health practitioners have begun to draw upon
  religious coping resources in their efforts to
  ameliorate a variety of problems and conditions

3
What we know about religion and coping

• Freud (1927) argued that religion is rooted in
  the childs sense of helplessness in the face of
  a world filled with dangerous and uncontrollable
  forces
• For Freud, religion was defensive in nature,
  designed to allay anxiety and avoid the
  confrontation with reality
• This view oversimplifies religious life and is
  inconsistent with an emerging literature on
  religion and coping

4
Religion is more than a defence

• Before surgery patients facing major surgery
  reported higher levels of anxiety and beliefs in
  God than minor surgery patients and a control
  group
• After surgery the levels of anxiety and religious
  beliefs declined significantly among those
  experiencing the serious procedures, while the
  levels of anxiety and beliefs remained constant
  in the other two groups (Shrimali Broota, 1987)
• While there may be a grain of truth that religion
  can serve as a defence, there is little
  foundation to the idea that religion is merely
  defence

5
Religion is more than a defence

• Part of the power of religion lies in its ability
  to serve a wide variety of needs among its
  adherents
• Most religious traditions provide their members
  with rites of passage that encourage them to
  acknowledge and mark difficult life transitions
  rather than deny their reality
• Rather than encourage denial religion promotes
  reinterpretations of negative events through the
  sacred lens
• Parents, of infants who died of sudden infant
  death syndrome, who were more religious found
  greater meaning in their childs death over time
  and, in turn, experienced less distress (McIntosh
  et al., 1993)

6
Religion is more than a defence

• Pargament et al. (1988) distinguished among three
  ways in which religion can be involved in the
  search for control in the problems-solving
  process
• A deferring approach in which the individual
  relinquishes the responsibility for problem
  solving to God
• A self-directing approach in which the individual
  perceives God giving him/her the skills and
  resources to solve problems independently
• A collaborative approach in which the individual
  perceives God to be a partner who shares in the
  responsibility for problem solving
• Collaborative problem solving was the most common

7
Religion expresses itself in many ways in coping

• When religion has been measured within the
  general coping literature, it has usually been
  assessed by only one or two items
• It is important to consider not only how much
  religion is involved in coping, but also how
  religion is involved in coping
• Pargament et al. (2000) developed a measure of 21
  types of religious coping
• The religious coping activities represent five
  key religious functions
• Search for meaning
• Search for mastery and control
• Search for comfort and closeness to God
• Search for a life transformation

8
The many methods of religious coping

• Religious methods of coping to find meaning
• E.g., Benevolent religious reappraisal
  redefining the stressor through religion as
  potentially beneficial
• Religious methods of coping to gain mastery and
  control
• E.g., Active religious surrender active giving
  up of control to God in coping
• Religious methods of coping to gain comfort and
  closeness to God
• E.g., Religious focus engaging in religious
  activities to shift focus from the stressor
• Religious methods of coping to gain intimacy with
  others and closeness to God
• E.g., Religious helping - attempting to provide
  spiritual support and comfort to others
• Religious methods of coping to achieve a life
  transformation
• E.g., Religious conversion looking to religion
  for a radical change in life

9
Religious coping methods can be helpful or harmful

• Religious coping methods can be grouped into two
  broad overarching categories positive and
  negative religious coping (Pargament et al.,
  1998)
• Positive religious coping strategies reflect a
  secure relationship with God and a sense of
  spiritual connectedness with others
• Negative religious coping strategies reflect an
  insecure relationship with God and tension
  between congregation members
• Positive religious coping was positively
  associated with positive outcomes such as greater
  life-satisfaction and was negatively associated
  with negative outcomes such as depression (Ano
  Vasconcelles, 2005)

10
Religious coping methods can be helpful or harmful

• Positive religious coping has also been
  associated with indices of better physical health
  (e.g., Koenig et al., 2001)
• Negative religious coping was positively
  associated with negative psychological outcomes
  such as depression and anxiety (Ano
  Vasconcelles, 2005)
• Negative religious coping also has harmful
  implications for physical functioning (e.g.,
  Pargament et al., 2001)

11
Religious coping methods can be helpful or harmful

• The relationships between religious coping and
  adjustment have remained significant after
  adjusting for the effects of demographic
  variables and non-religious coping measures
• Some studies of religious coping have reported
  contradictory or non-significant findings (e.g.,
  Culver et al., 2002)
• Differences in samples, stressors, and measures
  may partly account for these discrepencies

12
People draw on a general orienting system in
religious coping

• The orienting system is a general disposition to
  the world that involves beliefs, feelings,
  practices, and relationships from religious,
  personality, and social domains (Pargament, 1997)
• In specific situations, people draw on religious
  coping methods that are a part of their general
  orienting system
• Studies have shown that religious coping mediated
  the relationship between dispositional variables
  (e.g., religious orientation, attachment to God)
  and the outcome to stressful events (e.g., Roesch
  Ano, 2003 Belavich Pargament, 2002)

13
Effects of religious coping are moderated by
different factors

• Religious coping appears to be more helpful for
  those who are religious (e.g., Krause et al.,
  1998 Pargament et al., 2001)
• Religious coping appears to be more helpful
  during more taxing situations that push people to
  the bounds of human limitations, when immediate
  personal and social resources are depleted (e.g.,
  Maton, 1989)
• Religious coping has differential effects for
  people from different religious affiliations
• Dealing with the stress of a kidney transplant,
  religious coping was associated with greater life
  satisfaction for Protestants but not for
  Catholics (Tix Frazier, 1998)

14
From research to practice

• Spiritually integrated psychotherapeutic
  approaches are still in their infancy
• However, promising models of treatment that build
  on religious coping methods are in the process of
  development (e.g., Avants Margolin, 2004)
• Spiritual meditation was associated with
  significantly greater anxiety reduction, and
  greater ability to withstand pain than secular
  meditation or a relaxation group (Wachholtz
  Pargament, in press)
• People who made use of a prayer wheel reported
  significant decreases in anxiety, and to a lesser
  degree, depression (Rajagopal et al., 2002)

15
From research to practice

• Compared to secular confession and a control
  condition, spiritual confession was associated
  with greater reports of spiritual growth
  (Murray-Swank, 2003)
• However, it was also linked to higher levels of
  guilt in comparison to the non-spiritual
  confession conditions (Murray-Swank, 2003)
• Targ and Levine (2002) compared the effects of a
  mind-body-spirit group intervention for women
  with cancer with a support group
• The spiritual group showed greater increases in
  spiritual integration and less avoidance, but the
  support group showed more declines in confusion
  and helplessness/hopelessness

16
From research to practice

• A Christian-accomodative form of
  cognitive-behavioural therapy did not differ in
  efficacy from standard cognitive-behavioural
  therapy (McCullough, 1999)
• Retention and rehabilitation rates were higher in
  a drug rehab programme that encouraged religious
  transformation than those reported by comparable
  secular programmes (Gruner, 1984)

17
From research to practice

• Murray-Swank and Pargament (2003) evaluated an
  8-week individual intervention that drew on
  spiritual resources to help women who had
  experienced childhood sexual abuse
• 80 of the women reported reductions in
  psychological and spiritual distress
• Spiritual intervention did not trigger any
  serious psychological disturbances among
  individuals experiencing serious mental illness
  (Phillips et al., 2002)

18
Future directions research and practice

• Research in the domain of religion and coping
  should be more fully integrated into mainstream
  research and practice within the applied health
  professions and the social and health sciences
• Research should investigate religious coping in
  ethnically and religiously diverse samples
• Drawing on research from multicultural
  psychology, it would be interesting to examine
  the nature and prevalence of specific religious
  coping strategies, such as interpersonal
  religious discontent and seeking support from
  clergy and members in diverse ethnic groups

19
Future directions research and practice

• There is a need for more longitudinal studies of
  religious coping
• Longitudinal studies are also needed to examine
  fluctuations in religious coping over time and
  their implications for adjustment
• Results from a diary study of religious coping
  among arthritis patients found significant
  variation in religious coping from day to day
  (Keefe et al., 2001)

20
Future directions research and practice

• Studies should investigate religious coping among
  relatively neglected groups, such as people with
  serious mental illness
• 80 of people with mental illness used religion
  to cope with daily frustrations (Tepper et al.,
  2001)
• Researchers should examine religious coping from
  a developmental perspective and investigate how
  it develops over the life-span
• E.g., could spending more time in contemplative
  prayer improve abstract cognitive reasoning?

21
Future directions research and practice

• There is need for studies of specific religious
  coping methods e.g., confession
• Rites of passage (e.g., confirmations, funerals)
  are often imbued with deep emotions and
  significance, and thus represent rich targets for
  studies of the affective basis of spirituality
• Research should incorporate both quantitative and
  qualitative methods for studying religious coping
  

22
Future directions research and practice

• There is a need for studies that include multiple
  criteria of well-being
• E.g., social, spiritual, and physical dimensions
  of well-being
• Mahoney et al. (2002) found that college students
  who perceived 9/11 terrorist attacks as
  desecrations of something sacred adopted more
  severely retaliatory attitudes toward the
  terrorists responsible for these acts

23
Future directions research and practice

• Studies are needed to compare the efficacy of
  religiously oriented treatments with other
  traditional secular interventions through
  experimental designs
• Most psychospiritual interventions augment
  traditional approaches to the treatment of
  psychological problems
• Additional studies are needed to develop and
  evaluate spiritually based interventions that
  specifically address religious problems, such as
  spiritual struggles