Spirit, Science, and Health: How the Spiritual Mind Fuels Physical Wellness

by Thomas G. Plante Ph.D., Carl E. Thoresen

Overview

From meditation to reciting mantras or praying, spirituality is more and more often being recognized for its beneficial effects on health. In this volume, a team of experts from across disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing, public health, and pastoral care offer reader-friendly chapters showing the state of the art in understanding this connection. Chapters include attention to special populations such as youth, HIV/AIDS patients, cancer patients, and those in hospice care. Contributors, all members of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University, aim to use the scientific understanding of the spirituality/health connection to promote better health for the general public.

From meditation to reciting mantras or praying, spirituality is more and more often being recognized for its beneficial effects on health. In this volume, a team of experts from across disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing, public health, and pastoral care offer reader-friendly chapters showing the state of the art in understanding this connection. Chapters include attention to special populations such as youth, HIV/AIDS patients, cancer patients, and those in hospice care. Contributors, all members of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University, aim to use the scientific understanding of the spirituality/health connection to promote better health for the general public. One focus of this volume is to show easy ways to incorporate spiritual practices in an environment that is often multicultural, multi-religious, stressful, hurried, and secular.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275995065
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/30/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Thomas G. Plante is Professor and Chair of Psychology at Santa Clara University and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has authored, edited, or co-edited 10 books, and more than 100 chapters and jourbanal articles. Widely known in the popular media, Plante has been featured in TIME, People, USA Today, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. He is series editor for the Preager series, Abnormal Psychology.

Carl E. Thoresen is Professor Emeritus of Education and Psychology, and, by courtesy, Psychiatry/Behavioral Science at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Spirituality & Health Institute at Santa Clara University. Thoresen has worked in the field of Counseling and Health Psychology for more than 30 years. A Founding Fellow for the Society of Behavioral Medicine, he served on an Expert Panel for the National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences, focused on spirituality and health. His many awards include the John Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, election to Fellow status in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Association, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Albert Bandura     vii
Preface     ix
Acknowledgments     xiii
Overview, Assessment, and Modeling
Spirituality, Religion, and Health: What's the Deal?   Carl E. Thoresen     3
Prayer and Health   Kevin S. Masters     11
A Few Good Measures: Assessing Religion and Spirituality in Relation to Health   Peter C. Hill   Katie J. Kopp   Richard A. Bollinger     25
How Does One Learn to Be Spiritual? The Neglected Role of Spiritual Modeling in Health   Doug Oman   Carl E. Thoresen     39
Meditation
Meditation: Exploring the Farther Reaches   Shauna L. Shapiro   Roger Walsh     57
The Eight-Point Program of Passage Meditation: Health Effects of a Comprehensive Program   Tim Flinders   Doug Oman   Carol Lee Flinders     72
Mantram or Holy Name Repetition: Health Benefits from a Portable Spiritual Practice   Jill E. Bormann   Doug Oman     94
Spirit and Action
Compassion and Health   Amy B. Wachholtz   Michelle Pearce     115
The Calling Protocol: Promoting Greater Health, Joy, and Purpose in Life   Diane E. Dreher   Thomas G. Plante     129
SpecialPopulations
Religion/Spirituality and Health in Adolescents   Sian Cotton   Daniel H. Grossoehme   Joel Tsevat     143
Spirituality and Cancer   Allen C. Sherman   Stephanie Simonton     157
Spirituality and HIV/AIDS   Heidemarie Kremer   Gail Ironson     176
Spirituality at the End of Life: Issues and Guidelines for Care   Kathryn Z. McNichols   David B. Feldman     191
Ethical Issues
Spirituality, Religion, and Health: Ethical Issues to Consider   Thomas G. Plante     207
About the Editors and Contributors     219
Index     223

What People are Saying About This

Harold G. Koenig

"Spirit, Science and Health: How the Spiritual Mind Fuels Physical Wellness, edited by two of the top researchers and authorities in the field, covers a wide range of key topics on the frontier of the discipline of spirituality and health. It is an outstanding contribution to the literature that is a must read for skeptics and believers alike in this growing field. Chapters on prayer, meditation, measurement, spiritual growth, spiritual interventions, ethics of integrating spirituality into patient care and special issues related to adolescents, persons who are HIV positive or have AIDS, or cancer, provide a cohesive menu of must-read topics. Each of these chapters is written by authors who are immensely knowledgeable with a depth of research and clinical experience. These are the trendsetters in spirituality and health. This volume will be one that won't stay on your shelf for very long."

Kenneth I. Pargament

"Illuminating, engaging, and intriguing—this book signals a coming of age of the science of spirituality and health. These chapters move beyond the basic question of whether spirituality relates to health to the more sophisticated question of how spirituality relates to health. Written inuser-friendly language, this important work will introduce many readers to the significant body of wisdom—theoretical, empirical, and practical—that is emerging from diverse disciplines on the topic of spirituality and health."

Editorial Reviews

This book could serve very effectively as a brief reference handbook or as an introductory textbook for the emerging field of spirituality and health—now a component in the curriculum of many schools of nursing, medicine, and other health-related professions, as well as in some colleges of liberal arts or education. The book is a particularly well-integrated collection of short reports on the current state of the field. It covers concepts and assessment instruments typically used in spirituality-and-health research. It also covers basic techniques for self-management and personal development (such as prayer and meditation) that long have been part of spiritual traditions, and increasingly are recognized as having relevance for health maintenance too. The book concludes with consideration of general ethical issues and with problems characteristic of specific population groups, e.g., adolescents, the elderly, HIV/AIDS sufferers, and cancer patients. Contributors treat these issues with discernment, respect, and appropriate expertise….Recommended. All levels.” —Choice

“Medicine is increasingly embracing a health promotion rather than disease model. As associates with the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara U., Plante and Thoreson, introduce 14 chapters examining how the formerly little-researched psychosocial factor of spirituality/religion relates to health in general and to specific patient populations. Social cognitive theory, to which the contributions of preface writer Albert Bandura Stanford U.) are well-known, is used to explain the demonstrated health effects of such practices as meditation and holy name repetition. Case examples treat ethical pitfalls.” —SciTech Book News

From the Publisher