Spirituality and Health Outcomes in the Elderly

The purpose of this mail survey was to examine the relationship of attitudinal and behavioral measures of spirituality to physical and mental health outcomes in a sample of elderly community residents. Frequency of prayer, importance of faith, and reliance on religion for their coping were compared for their association with eight categories of physical and mental health. All three measures, prayer, faith and religious coping, correlated strongly with positive mental health, but not with the other seven physical health categories. Multiple regression analyses indicated importance of one's faith had the strongest association with positive mental health, even after controlling for the effect of other significant variables, age and education. The behavioral measure of prayer was a component of importance of faith to mental health, with no independent impact. This study highlights attitudes rather than practices, as the stronger spiritual variables related to mental health in the elderly.     

认知年老化和老年心理健康

认知功能和心理健康是健康老龄化的两个基本要素。认知功能随年老而加速减退,其机制的探讨表明,加工速度、工作记忆和执行功能在认知年老过程中均起重要的中介作用。大多数老年人的心理健康状况较好、生活满意度较高,其心态随年龄的增高而更趋于平静满足,但独居和绝对空巢老人的某些心理健康问题不容忽视。认知年老化过程和老年人的心理健康状况分别受诸多因素的影响,研究结果为延缓认知功能的年老减退和保持老年人的心理健康,以及实现健康老龄化和积极老龄化提供了有益的启示     

Religion and Disparities: Considering the Influences of Islam on the Health of American Muslims

Both theory and data suggest that religions shape the way individuals interpret and seek help for their illnesses. Yet, health disparities research has rarely examined the influence of a shared religion on the health of individuals from distinct minority communities. In this paper, we focus on Islam and American Muslims to outline the ways in which a shared religion may impact the health of a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse minority community. We use Kleinman’s “cultural construction of clinical reality” as a theoretical framework to interpret the extant literature on American Muslim health. We then propose a research agenda that would extend current disparities research to include measures of religiosity, particularly among populations that share a minority religious affiliation. The research we propose would provide a fuller understanding of the relationships between religion and health among Muslim Americans and other minority communities and would thereby undergird efforts to reduce unwarranted health disparities.     

Rural and Urban Elderly Construe Health Differently

Samples of people aged 65 or older (N = 396) living in the metropolitan Omaha area and in the rural Sandhills counties of central and western Nebraska completed an instrument to assess health satisfaction, health behaviors, and attitudes toward heath care. Few intergroup differences were found that could be attributed to the area of residence. However, factor analysis and item analysis of the attitudes toward health items indicated that older respondents in rural areas may have very different perceptions of health in general and of health care services in particular than those of elderly urban residents.     

老年人的健康状况与其居住安排的关系研究

考察了老年人的健康状况与其居住安排的关系机制, 表明中国老年人的整体健康状况大致可分为四类, 从健康到不健康依次为:健康、轻度残障、认知缺损以及非常不健康。在轻度残障和认知缺损上, 不同居住安排的老年人之间并无显著差异。而在最不健康状况上, 独居老年人发生的可能性显著低于与配偶同住的老年人, 不与子女同住老年人 (尤其是丧偶人群中) 也显著低于与子女同住的老年人。不同居住安排的老年人在健康上的差异, 可能是选择机制和保护机制共同作用的结果。     

Family Violence and Health Among Elderly in Croatia

This article presents the research carried out on a sample of 303 elderly men and women. In the last year they reported experiencing violence in the family as follows: psychological abuse (24.1%), financial exploitation (6.4%), physical abuse (4.4%), and sexual abuse (2.1%). The abusers were most often husbands (30.15%), sons (16.64%), daughters (14.01%), and wives (9.21%). In the partner relationship, 44%?of the women and 35%?of the men had experienced at least some form of violence. The results showed that elderly men and women who were victims of family abuse had poorer psychological health than those without such experiences. Elderly who had experienced partner violence consumed alcohol more often than those who had experienced violence by other household members.     

明清之际伊斯兰教中国化的“以儒诠经”模式

明清之际的以儒诠经,内涵之中历史地出现了一个特殊知识群体,自然地包含有四个目的、两大手段和三种具体作为,用话语表述,该文化创造模式可以解释为:明清之际我国伊斯兰教的以儒诠经,是回儒这个文化兼通的特殊知识群体,立足中国,采用汉语,在本土社会语境中,对该宗教经义所做出的再诠释,过程中于公的目的是兴教、明道和补足百家之不足,于私的目的是立个人不朽之言,因而针对本土元素展开了批判(为先),继而有选择地加以借用和融会贯通,同时为伊斯兰教正本清源,再通过以文会友,最终收获了针对外教的释疑并取得某种认同,从而为伊斯兰教适应本土社会赢得了有利机会和条件。     

Health,Healing and Wholeness in Frail Elderly People

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relationship between health, healing and wholeness in a group of twenty frail older residents of nursing homes, using in-depth interviews. While the participants in this study were all frail and lived with a number of disabilities, they demonstrated signs of transcendence in their responses to their disabilities. While independent living older adults in a previous study had all expressed fears of future vulnerability, only 45% of these nursing home residents said they had fears. Failure to thrive is discussed as one area of concern for frail older people, noting that this may stem from a lack of nourishment of the soul. Pastoral care is described as a multidisciplinary intervention for these residents, forming part of their wholistic care.     

Islam and suicide

Suicide and homicide rates of a sample of 72 nations were associated with a cluster of social variables related to economic development but not with a cluster related to the proportion of Islamic adherents.     

Documentation: Islam and the West

This speech was given on Wednesday 27 October 1993 in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, on the occasion of the Prince of Wales' visit to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.     

Islam and the Sermon on the Mount

The theme of Islam and the Sermon on the Mount belongs to a lively, controversial field of discourse, in which representatives of the major monotheistic religions conflict in their claims to truth, and it has formed a central point in their encounters. For example, representatives of the Salafiyya saw in the Sermon a barrier to the secular order. Through their criticisms, they tended even to appropriate the Sermon for the purposes of Islam. However, the ethical message of the Sermon has usually not been interrogated as such. Form-critical, symbolic, structural and intentional similarities in Muslim remarks point to this appreciation. Nevertheless, Muslims seem much more concerned with the specific contextual meaning of the Sermon and its historicity rather than considering its principle of love for enemies or its legislative nature. Thus, positive receptions of the Sermon, such as al-Ghazzālī's or the recognition discourse of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, if not forgotten, have fallen into the background. In the atmosphere of Christian missionary and colonial experience and the post-colonial aftermath, this reception history and its semantic transformations are certainly understandable. However, they first offer a fertile ground for inter-religious dialogue when the mutual understanding processes are revealed and the discursively produced internal and external allocations, so rich with meaning, are exposed.