Symposium IV
Religion, Culture and Immigration
Friday, May 13, 2016, 10:30 - 12:00
Chair: Katarzyna Skrzypinska
1. Psychosocial Predictors of Life Satisfaction among Polish Immigrants in Ireland
Mariola Bidzan, Agnieszka Kulczycka
There is probably no exaggeration in assuming that the twenty first century is a century of migrations. This tendency is mainly driven by economic disparities, better opportunities and predictable environment. Improving life satisfaction may be an important motivation to move abroad. However there is no doubt that emigration may affect the psyche and can be even experienced as loss and grief. We want to present our results from a study that was conducted on 270 Polish immigrants in Ireland. Our aim is to examine spirituality as a mediator between life satisfaction and resilience, self-efficacy, and stress. There are many studies showing the positive impact of spirituality on mental and physical well-being. Exploring the above mentioned variables may be significant in terms of understanding the role of spirituality in the compound process of resettlement and implementing it in counselling and other forms of supporting the immigrants.
2. Immigrants’ Religiosity and Mental Health in the Perceptions of Brazilian and Portuguese Mental Health Professionals
Marta Helena de Freitas, Dr. Félix Neto
This presentation aims to share an exploratory research that investigated the relationship between religiosity and mental health in the perceptions of psychiatrists and psychologists providing mental health care services to immigrants in the mental health care institutions in Portugal and Brazil. The research was carried out according a qualitative phenomenological methodology, consisting of semi-structured interviews with 20 psychiatrists and 20 psychologists, 10 of each group in each one of both countries. The study set out to investigate the following aspects: whether religious aspects have made themselves felt in the specific experience of attending to immigrant patients and, if so, in what way; how they perceive and address those aspects; whether they establish connections or distinctions between religiosity and mental health in immigrants and, if so, what are the implications of that for their praxis with those same immigrants; whether this subject was contemplated in their professional education and, if not, how they developed resources to deal with this matter in their practice in mental health contexts. Results showed that these professional health workers are sensitive to and aware of that relationship in spite of never having received formal training during their professional qualification courses. They were critical of the oppressive aspects of some religions but recognized the predominance of positive effects of religiosity on mental health, especially for those people who are immigrants. Contribution albeit exploratory in nature, this study makes a contribution by opening the way for the issue of religiosity and its impacts on mental health to become the object of more in-depth investigations conducted in a multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective, targeting greater numbers of mental health professionals and extended to other internal and external migratory contexts.
3. Religion, Spirituality, and Health in Ireland: A Systematic Review of the Literature
Christopher Alan Lewis, Dagmar Anna S. Corry, Mary Jane Lewis
The association between Religion / Spirituality (R/S) and health has been the subject of much international empirical research. From these findings it can be concluded that R/S is associated with both better physical and mental health. However, these findings are sensitive to how R/S and health are operationalised, as well as the cultural context. One cultural context in which R/S has been particularly salient is in Ireland (both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland).
The present aim was to systematically review research that has examined the association between R/S and health in Ireland to investigate if the well documented international finding of a positive relationship between R/S and health is confirmed. This is based in commonly used databases were searched using relevant key terms.
In total, 30 published studies employing Irish respondents were identified. These studies contained examples of both quantitative, typically conducted among non-clinical samples, and qualitative research, typically conducted among clinical samples. Within these studies there were examples of research examining the relationship between R/S and i) mental health, ii) health behaviours, and iii) physical health. The consensus from these findings indicate that R/S is associated with both better physical and mental health, both within and across these different operationalisations of health.
These findings, across a wide range of health areas, with a variety of different methodologies clearly indicate that R/S should be an important consideration for healthcare policy makers and practitioners in Ireland.
4. Historic Cuba Medicine and Religion Dialogue - Neural Correlates of Prayer and Near-Death Experiences
Robert Hesse
On 9 December 2015 an historic event took place in Cuba when religion was presented to the University of Havana via its School of Medical Science for the first time in over 50 years since the revolution. It was also historic because the Archdiocese of Havana and the University of Havana jointly sponsored the event with Jaime Cardinal Ortega of Havana present at the opening session.
Calixto Machado, M.D., Ph.D. of the University of Havana’s School of Medical Science and President of the International Symposium on Brain Death & Disorders of Consciousness, extended an invitation to organize a one-day Spirituality and Health Session at his VII Symposium on 8-11 December 2015 in Cuba.
The Spirituality & Health Session included two world-renowned keynote-prerecorded speakers: Harold Koenig, M.D., Duke University Medical Center and editor of The Handbook of Religion and Health, and Ken Pargament, Ph.D., Bowling Green State University and Editor-In-Chief of the 2013 two-volume APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality. Additional presenters were professors from Pontifical University, Regina Apostolorum in Rome and Baylor College of Medicine and University of St. Thomas in Houston.
This provided a unique case study to observe the impact that spirituality and health research had on the underlying normative views of human health held by a medical community that, by government policy, is non-religious, but considered to be the best trained in the communist/socialist world.
The presentations at the Spirituality and Health Session covered the large and growing body of scientific research that shows belief in a higher power, religion, and spirituality promote healing. It started with general medical research. For example regular church attendance increases longevity by as much as 7 years, lowers blood pressure, strengthens the immune system, et.al. Also presented was the current MRI and fMRI research on the benefits of prayer. It concluded with the teaching of centering prayer, a Christian form of contemplative meditation, to both believers and atheists.
Soon to be published fMRI research will be briefly summarized, showing that one-on-one discursive prayer lessens depression and changes the brain’s habenula, a structure involved in the signaling of negative events. Prayer also changed the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-referencing processes and cognitive control.
A summary will be given of Dr. Machado’s overall reaction on what impact the Spirituality & Health Session had on the local Cuban medical attendees. For example some participants in the centering prayer session immediately testified to its potential neuroscientific benefits.
The most significant conclusion is the potential collaborative follow-up research currently being discussed on the effects of prayer on the brain and on the similarity of deep contemplative experiences to near-death experiences.