Exploring the acceptance of religious assistance among patients of a psychiatric hospital

Giancarlo Lucchetti, Camilla C Braguetta, Candido Vallada and Homero Vallada

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2013, vol. 59, issue 4, 311-317

Abstract: Background: Spiritual issues are rarely addressed by psychiatric institutions in daily routine practice. Aims: To report the prevalence of, and factors associated with, inpatients’ acceptance of religious assistance in a psychiatric hospital. Methods: All patients evaluated by the religious assistance service in a psychiatric hospital were included. Patients admitted were asked about their need for religious assistance and were assessed on several religious aspects. Additional information was collected from patients’ hospital charts. A comparison between those who accepted the religious assistance and those who did not was performed. Results: Most of the 213 patients evaluated requested religious assistance (85.0%), including those that reported having no religion (79.1%). Patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia ( p = .010) and lower intrinsic religiousness ( p = .002) tended to request less religious assistance. More than 80% of patients requested assistance based on religious traditions other than their own. Conclusion: Most psychiatric inpatients were willing to participate in religious assistance sessions, even those without formal religious affiliations. Patients with lower intrinsic religiosity and schizophrenia tended to request less assistance. We believe the findings of this study can serve to foster discussion on whether psychiatric hospitals should provide a structured religious care service.

Keywords: Spirituality; religion and medicine; psychiatry; religious assistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764011433628 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:59:y:2013:i:4:p:311-317

DOI: 10.1177/0020764011433628

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().