Influence of Religiosity on the Quality of Life and on Pain Intensity in Chronic Pancreatitis Patients After Neurolytic Celiac Plexus Block: Case-Controlled Study

The quality of life in patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP) is reduced due to their suffering of high levels of pain. It has been presented that quality of life can also be linked to religiosity and/or spirituality. The aim of this study is to assess the influence of religious practices on the quality of life and on the subjective level of pain in CP patients. Ninety-two patients (37 women and 55 men) with chronic pancreatitis were treated invasively for pain with neurolytic celiac plexus block (NCPB). The religiosity of the patients was recorded and served as a dichotomizer. Group 1 was for patients who claimed to have no contact with the church or to have very sporadic contact (N = 35 patients). Group 2 was for patients who claimed to have deep faith and were regular participants at church activities (N = 57 patients). Visual analogue scale was used to assess pain, while the quality of life was measured by using QLQ C-30 questionnaire adapted for chronic pancreatitis patients in Polish population. The patients were assessed prior to the pain-relieving intervention and subsequently 2 and 8 weeks after it. The intensity of pain was reduced in both groups significantly after performing the NCPB. Patients who declared a deep faith reported higher level of pain on the VAS scale prior to intervention than non-religious patients. Quality of life in both groups of patients significantly improved after NCPB. Following NCPB, global quality of life in patients who declared higher religiosity/church attendance was significantly higher (79.88) than for those patients who have no contact or sporadic contact with the church (44.21, P < 0.05). NCPB resulted in significant reduction of pain and increase in quality of life in both groups of patients with CP. Nevertheless, in the group declaring higher religiosity/church attendance, reported pain was higher, but, despite that, quality of life better. It may be concluded that religious practices might serve as an additional factor improving quality of life and coping in patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis.     

Mediators of the associations between parents’ conditional regard and the quality of their adult-children’s peer-relationships

Motivation and Emotion - Parental conditional regard (PCR) involves parents providing or withdrawing affection to motivate children to do what the parents want. Numerous studies have demonstrated...     

Laplace’s demon tries on Aristotle’s cloak: on two approaches to determinism

Synthese - The paper describes two approaches to determinism: one focuses on the features of global objects, such as possible worlds or models of a theory, whereas the other’s concern is the...     

Valence of Affective Verbal Fluency: fMRI Studies on Neural Organization of Emotional Concepts <Emphasis Type="Italic">Joy</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Fear</Emphasis>

The present study was designed to examine the underlying brain mechanisms of positive and negative emotional verbal fluency. Three verbal fluency tasks (one non-emotional phonemic task, two emotional tasks: Joy and Fear) were used in this study. The results were analyzed for 35 healthy, Polish-speaking, right-handed adults aged 20–35. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (3T) was used to show brain activity during active participation in emotional verbal fluency tasks. The results reported for emotional fluency confirmed activation of different brain regions for the negative and positive emotional verbal fluency: in positive emotional verbal fluency Joy elicits greater activation in the frontal regions and the cingulate cortex, while in negative verbal fluency Fear is reflected in activation of parietal and temporal areas. The study provides an evidence for differentiation in neural mechanisms between positive and negative emotional verbal fluency and/or positive and negative retrieving processes, and differentiation in brain-related determinants of the emotional concepts organization.     

Religion and behavioral procrastination: Mediating effects of locus of control and content of prayer

Religion is a significant predictor of self-regulatory processes. Procrastination has been described as the very essence of self-regulatory failure. In this study, we examined the relationship between religiousness and procrastination, with locus of control and styles of prayer playing mediating roles. These relationships were tested using data from 196 students. We applied the Centrality of Religiosity Scale, Levenson’s Locus of Control Scale, the God Control Scale, the Content of Prayer Scale, and the Behavioral Procrastination Scale. The results showed that: God control fully mediates the effects of ideology and intellect on procrastination; internal control fully mediates the effect of public prayer and religious experience on procrastination; and passive style of prayer was a mediator in the relationship between centrality of religion and procrastination. Our findings suggest that religious people may give up internal control, believing that their matters are in God’s hands. Being subject to God’s power provides them with a replacement form of control, which reduces problems of self-regulation.

     

A cognitively-gated place? The role of need for closure in a biased perception of the place’s past

Biased memory of the past is often a starting point for intergroup conflicts. In three correlational studies, we examined the relationship between need for closure (NFC) and historical ethnocentric bias, a tendency to overestimate the role of one’s ethnic group in the multicultural history of the city of residence. In addition, we checked whether this relationship would be mediated by an individual preference for essentialist places. We found that higher NFC was related to increased historical ethnocentric bias. Moreover, this relation was mediated by preference for an essentialist type of a place. Our results may contribute to understanding the role of individual differences and preferred type of place in shaping a biased representation of the past. Furthermore, our research findings point to the importance of raising awareness of the multicultural past among high NFC individuals.