14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists have recently determined that individuals who believe in a benevolent god could have a lot to benefit if their religious beliefs are introduced into standardized treatment options. The new study took a critical look at spiritual beliefs, and determined that they could improve treatment regimen outcomes.
It is the recommendation of the study team that mental health professionals look for ways of introducing this approach in the therapies they are prescribing, especially for religious individuals. For non-religious people, spiritual beliefs holds no importance, and do not influence treatment.
Among those who believe in a omnipotent god, those who are of the opinion that the entity is benevolent are much more likely to take life's uncertainties at face value than those who tend to believe in an indifferent or punishing deity.
Details of the new research effort were published in the latest issue of the journal Clinical Psychology, PsychCentral reports. The work was conducted by experts at the McLean Hospital, in the United States.
“The implications of this paper for the field of psychiatry are that we have to take patients’ spirituality more seriously than we do,” lead researcher David H. Rosmarin, PhD, says of the new research effort.
“Most practitioners are unprepared to conceptualize how spiritual beliefs may contribute to affective states and thus many struggle to integrate such themes into treatment in a spiritually sensitive manner,” he and his team write in the paper.
During the investigation, the team looked at data collected by two previous studies, which included Jew and Christian participants. In the experiments the team set up, it was made obvious that trust or distrust in a god could be manipulated through a series of video clips.
The more participants were likely to believe in a benevolent god, the more likely they became to accept life at face value. When this happened, people who suffered from depression fared a lot better than their peers whose spiritual beliefs did not come into play.
“These findings […] suggest that certain spiritual beliefs are tied to intolerance of uncertainty and worry for some individuals,” researchers add.
“We found that the positive beliefs of trust in God were associated with less worry and that this relationship was partially mediated by lower levels of intolerance of uncertainty. Conversely, the negative beliefs of mistrust in God correlated with higher worry and intolerance,” they conclude.