Safeguarding health through spiritual discussions

Physicians around the world are increasingly coming to accept that religion helps to promote health. Doctors are being advised that medical treatment should begin considering the spiritual beliefs of patients now that positive effects of religion have been found in most or all studies of drug use, adjustment or coping to a crisis, depression, alcohol abuse, marital disharmonies, anxiety and extra-marital or pre-marital sexual activity, among others.

Religion is seen to promote a feeling of peace and a sense of purpose in life whereby individuals live with fine moral standards and without the temptation of seeking fun, fame or money through amoral means.  The religious live their lives with an intention of earning or serving their family, seeking to uplift themselves in life while they also consider and attend to the needs of society at large.

In the pursuit of noble objectives, it is not that life cannot be enjoyed. The religious enjoy living life honourably and with respect with their families and friends without being weblocked or addicted to vices that lead them to unethical behaviour.

The religious abstain from vices like drinking, illicit sex, gambling, cheating, stealing or corruption and live with due tolerance of what others believe in. Understandably, in life human beings are not perfect and many normally religious people continue to sin simply because their faith is shaken by the society they live in or by the literature they read or the electronic media they are exposed to. However all religions offer transgressors mercy for sins committed because one of the main qualities of God is that of being forgiving to those who sincerely repent and stop their past misdemeanours.

Physicians find that the religious recover well when treated for their medical ailments because they harbour a positive frame of mind. When people with faith are asked to adjust their lifestyle following a trauma, they do so better than those who do not believe in God because what faith does is to tune the human mind to a state of peace and a sense of purpose thereby allowing medical treatment to be more effective. On the other hand, medical treatment to a stressed and unstable mind is often undermined because of a patient’s negative frame of mind, partly resulting from being deprived of the vices that he or she is addicted to.

The medical profession is therefore increasingly encouraging doctors to consider attending to their patients’ spiritual beliefs, not with the intention of propagating their own faith but because patients are more likely to benefit from spiritual issues discussed in their healthcare. Doctors are however likely to be concerned that they could unintentionally offend their patients if they talk about spiritual beliefs that might contradict what their patients believe. The objective really should be to have patient sensitivity with patients being handled on a case-by-case basis.

Some two months ago when seeking consultancy on a hernia surgery at Toronto’s Shouldice Hospital my session with the Christian Canadian doctor lasted about 30 minutes. Out of these he spent about 15 minutes talking of religion and the need for human beings to learn to respect each other’s faiths in order to stop wars and to bring peace in the world.

He then produced a copy of the Holy Qur’an from his drawer and wondered why human beings would want to misinterpret “wonderful and peaceful” guidelines in this holy book to raise chaos in the world, very often also harming themselves because a cruel or boastful state of mind is deprived of peace and therefore is more vulnerable to ailments that could well lead to pre-mature death. Such spiritual discussions between a doctor and a patient help to build relationships and enable patients to face diseases or ailments more confidently.