On connection between religiousness and health
https://doi.org/10.24290/1029-3736-2023-29-3-50-67
Abstract
This article analyzes the relationship between religiousness and attitudes to health and illness, as well as commitment to a healthy lifestyle. The author underlines the difficulty of defining the concept of religiousness and, accordingly, the problem of identifying the number of religious people. The author also deals with the perception of Orthodox Christianity as a cultural tradition rather than religious confession. The issue of dehumanization of medicine and the separation of medicine from religion as one of the key aspects analyzed in this paper. We are talking about the religiousness of both the patient and the doctor and the importance of taking this factor into account when building their interaction. Ignoring this aspect can affect the quality of treatment and disease prevention. The author does not aim to describe the relationship between the impact of various religions on specific indicators of morbidity and life expectancy, but makes an attempt to demonstrate that in a modern high-tech society faith continues to perform its most important functions – it forms a sense of psychological stability, confidence, protects against loneliness, external threats and adverse life circumstances and in many ways has an impact on the treatment process, the speed of rehabilitation, etc. In addition to studies that testify to the positive impact of religious faith on health and its components, the author also uses less cited studies that deal with the absence of this influence and argue not in favor of religiosity as a component of health. In the end the author comes to the conclusion is that most of researchers still consider faith as a positive aspect of health and healthy lifestyle.
The methodological basis of the work: research of the Department of Sociology of the Family and Demography of the Faculty of Sociology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), the ZIRCON Research Group.
About the Author
E. N. Novoselova
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Novoselova Elena N., PhD in Sociology, Associate Professor of the Department of the Family and Demography, Faculty of Sociology
Leninsky Gory, 1-33, Moscow, 119234
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Review
For citations:
Novoselova E.N. On connection between religiousness and health. Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 18. Sociology and Political Science. 2023;29(3):50-67. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.24290/1029-3736-2023-29-3-50-67
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