From my viewpoint, the combining of both psychology and religious aspects was a "new idea", seemed somewhat odd, and made me uncomfortable. Due to my previous personal training and education (or lack of) I decided to not pursue an education at Rosemead. This was also partly due to a third reason mentioned by Hill stating that some believe religion and spirituality have fallen into the shadow of the rise of "science and rational enlightenment" (Hill, 2003). In another example concerning myself, my beliefs concerning religion and spirituality, unconscious to myself, faded as I progressed through college where I was enrolled in evidence based science classes. In my case, it was as if a higher education erased 15 years of Sunday school in an instant. A fact that is not true of my non-science based childhood friends.
With the use of global indices such as self-rated frequency of church attendance, religion and spirituality have demonstrated to be successful predictors of health related outcomes. These global indices posses limited reliability and in the past have lead researchers to ignore important aspects within religious and spiritual experiences (Hill, 2003). Without correct concepts and specific, reliable measurements, the religion- spirituality problem in health research cannot be fully addressed. Fortunately, in the recent past, there have steps taken in "delineating religion and spirituality concepts and measures" that are functionally related to mental and physical health (Hill, 2003). These constructs and measures include closeness to God, orienting and motivating forces, religious support, and religious and spiritual struggle. These measures have been shown through empirical studies to be significantly tied to health, which provides supporting evidence that religion and spirituality aid in the prediction of physical and mental health (Hill, 2003). .
Religion and spirituality influence health in a multitude of ways including the important way in which religion and spirituality are viewed around the world, especially in times of need.
- India had the 1st real University in the world that dates back about 4,000 years located in South India and has a history from back then noted to teach Language, Literature, Science, Social Science, Psychology, Math, Astronomy, Geography, Spritual Science, and many more. ...
