Critics Review
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
This
book provides a fascinating look at the role of religion and the
use of health services against the background of the current
availability of and access to health care across all segments of
society. This analysis suggests that the level of religiousness
and an individual's commitment to preventive behaviors and the use
of medical services may be a fruitful area of future
research....This is an unparalleled resource not only for
physicians with an interest in the relationship between religion
and health but perhaps even more for those who doubt its
significance. All physicians should consider the possibility that
something so meaningful to a large number of patients might also
be good for their health.
© American Medical Association
Doody
Review Services
Patricia E. Murphy, Ph.D. at Rush
Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center
Description:
This book handles well the daunting task of providing a
comprehensive and critical review of the research conducted
between 1900 and 2000 that measures the relationship between
religion and various mental and physical health outcomes.
Purpose:
The purpose is to lay a foundation for the growing focus on
medicine that takes into account mind/body/spirit. The critique of
research methods and instruments used in the past is a much needed
contribution to this area in which there are both excellent and
very inadequate studies. The authors' review provides a scientific
foundation for understanding how religion might impact health.
Audience:
Written for medical researchers, health professionals, and
religious professionals, the writing style and organization lends
itself well to be used as a handbook to focus on topics of
particular interest. The authors are both experts in the field of
health and research in the area of religion and health.
Features:
The book includes a chart of all the research in the field,
organized by health outcome, that includes information about the
design of the study and the measures and statistical analyses used
along with a score for the quality of the study. It also provides
a review of some of the religion/spirituality instruments most
frequently used in research.
Assessment: This is an
excellent book that can give those who are interested a solid
basis for assessing the merit of inclusion of a focus on spirit in
the practice of medicine. It provides the researcher a direction
that might help avoid pitfalls of the past. The writing is
interesting and inviting so that the lay person could also benefit
from exploring its contents.
©Doody Review Services
New
Yorker Magazine
Jerome Groopman, M.D., Chief of
Experimental Medicine at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard
Is religion
good for you? In a monumental new work, "Handbook of Religion and
Health" …[the authors]… subject that popular assumption to
rigorous analysis. They review and evaluate some sixteen hundred
twentieth-century studies and articles concerning the impact of
belief on health. Their conclusions are not entirely encouraging:
they suggest that although the relationship between health and
spirituality is clearly worthy of serious study, much of the
research done in the field to date has been shoddy. Koenig and his
collaborators also go to great lengths to educate the reader about
negative effects of belief and orthodoxies, which, in the current
cultural climate, are rarely mentioned, such as the fear that
disease is punishment for sin, and that assistance is preferably
derived through miracles rather than through medicines.
©New
Yorker Magazine
First Things
See review in
November 2001 issue by Paul R. McHugh, Psychiatrist-in-Chief at
Johns Hopkins Hospital
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