Continuity,Spiritual Growth,and Coping in Later Adulthood

SUMMARY

Continuity of values, lifestyles, and relationships combines with spiritual growth in later life to provide most people a sense of direction and adequate resources for coping with changes that occur with aging. Being able to recognize threads of continuity and to perceive benefit from one's inner life are significant predictors of being able to maintain life satisfaction in the face of negative aspects of aging. Data from a 20-year longitudinal study are used to provide details.     

Spiritual and Religious Implications of Aging with HIV: A Conceptual and Methodological Review

ABSTRACT

Spirituality and religious practices can buffer people from stressful life circumstances and promote positive biopsychosocial outcomes. The beneficial effects of spirituality and religious practices have been documented in aging and HIV. Unfortunately, little is known about spirituality and religious practices in older adults with HIV. As the number of older adults with HIV increases, with an estimated 91,000 adults over 50 being diagnosed with this disease in the United States, spirituality and religious practices may help HIV-positive people to age successfully. Crisis competence and spiritual trajectories are ways of conceptualizing spiritual development when confronting aging with a life-changing event such as a being diagnosed with HIV. Methodological issues in studying spirituality in adults aging with HIV are identified including defining spirituality and religiosity, heterogeneity of the population, timing of diagnosis, mode of transmission, sexual orientation, religious and cultural stigma, and hardiness. Implications for possible interventions are also posited.     

Spiritual Activities for Adults with Alzheimer's Disease: The Cognitive Components of Dementia and Religion

SUMMARY

Engaging adults with Alzheimer's disease in activities can prevent disease related agitation. Finding meaningful and enjoyable activities proves to be a difficult task due to severe damage to explicit memory and executive functioning. Fortunately, many spiritual and religious activities rely on more resilient cognitive features such as procedural memory and limbic system aspects of attachment and motivation. Such spiritual activities, if properly selected, can be used to engage adults with dementia. This approach, called Procedural and Emotional Religious Activity Therapy, can be used by various religious traditions and extended to multiple therapeutic venues.     

Heart failure patients’ desires for spiritual care,perceived constraints,and unmet spiritual needs: relations with well-being and health-related quality of life

Little information is available about HF patients’ desires regarding having their healthcare providers address their spiritual concerns, feeling constrained in doing so, and the extent to which their spiritual needs go unmet. Nearly half of our sample reported high levels of unmet spiritual needs and reported moderately strong desires to have their doctor or other healthcare professional attend to their spiritual needs, and moderately strong feelings of constraint in doing so. Spiritual constraint and unmet spiritual needs were associated with poorer spiritual, psychological and physical well-being, but these effects varied, depending on patients’ desire to discuss spiritual needs. These findings have important implications for clinical management of HF patients.     

Not so unfortunate: carnivalisation,metafiction & the elements of grotesque realism in The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

As the harbinger in Lemony Snicket’s children’s novel series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Bad Beginning unfolds subversively from the outset. This woeful tale is a far cry from what we traditionally expect to be a story written for children. Klaus, Violet and Sunny, the orphaned protagonists of the story, are literally the ‘magnets for misfortune’. As they experience the tragic events, the Baudelaires’ talents and abilities are constantly put to the test. A series of unfortunate events, this essay argues, leads to a fortunate and spiritual insight in the Baudelaires that underlines a sense of connectedness in the children who go through traumatic calamities, a spiritual sense that deals with both the bright and dark sides of the events. To substantiate this argument, Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalisation and degradation are utilised to shed a different and, of course, a spiritual shade of light on the seeming unfortunate events. Hierarchies are reversed and grotesque imageries reinforce degradation. This degradation, however, sparks off a new genesis in the life of the Baudelaires. Turning to the metafictional side of the novel and its conflicting relations with didacticism, this essay verifies the claim that Lemony Snicket provokes children into a critical reading of their own choice. Ultimately, the essay examines the mentioned Bakhtinian elements to gain a richer understanding of the melancholic narrative of the Baudelaires in the context of an upside down genre. This is when a tragic tale is read like a fairy tale.     

Adverse childhood experiences,religious/spiritual struggles,and mental health symptoms: examination of mediation models

Emerging research has documented greater risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression among young adults with prior adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Building upon prior findings, we hypothesised that religious/spiritual (R/S) struggles may serve as an intervening pathway through which accumulation of ACEs impacts mental health symptom severity in this population. Young adults (N?=?458) were recruited from a southeastern university to complete an online self-report survey that assessed for ACEs, lifetime trauma exposure, R/S struggles, PTSD and depressive symptomatology. Bivariate correlations yielded significant positive relationships between ACEs and all six types of R/S struggles, depression, and PTSD. Additionally, when accounting for non-childhood trauma exposure, the mediational analyses indicated an indirect effect of struggles with ultimate meaning on the well-establish association between ACEs and mental health symptoms. Clinical implications (such as the importance of fostering meaning making), study limitations, and future research directions are discussed.     

Locating experience in time and place: a look at young adult fiction and spiritual intelligence

Spiritual intelligence describes self-awareness and intuition, with the development of creative thinking, compassion and connectedness with others. Many researchers point to an awakening and development of spiritual intelligence that is enhanced through exploration of existential questions within the genre of young adult fiction. Such literature absorbs the adolescent reader so that they become transported into the narrative, exploring a sense of self and of others This article discusses the ways in which young adult fiction, including comparison of a novel of older context (An Episode of Sparrows) with contemporary dystopian fiction (The Maze Runner), can foster young adults’ exploration of self-awareness and cultivate the continued development of notions of connectedness, justice and responsibility. It describes current research on the relationship between spiritual intelligence in young adults and the narrative transportation effect of young adult fiction.     

Adam and Eve’s Origin: A Theory Harmonising Scientific Evidence with the Qur’anic Text1

A Muslim scientist engaged in interaction between theology and science needs to remain completely faithful to the Holy Qur’an. This also applies to understanding the historical and spiritual dimensions of Adam and Eve. When Islamic scholars (‘ulama’) differ on subject details, this author chooses the position closest to that suggested by the scientific data. This method, then, allows incorporation of facts drawn from skeletal material of early Homo sapiens who could well have provided our ancestral physical form. This article tenders a parsimonious and probable theory that accommodates all relevant Qur’anic statements in conjunction with the scientific data.     

I TO WE: THE ROLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFORMATION IN COMPASSION AND ALTRUISM

It is clear that human consciousness can be transformed through spiritual experiences and practices. Little is known, however, about what the predictors, mediators, and outcomes are of such transformations in consciousness. In‐depth structured interviews were conducted with forty‐seven teachers and scholars from religious and spiritual traditions and modern transformative movements to identify factors common to the transformative process across traditions. Compassion and altruism were almost universally identified as important outcomes of positive consciousness transformation. Results of our analysis suggest that altruism and compassion may arise as natural consequences of experiences of interconnection and oneness. These experiences appear to lead to shifts in perspective and changes in one's sense of self and self in relationship to others. Based on these findings, we suggest several mechanisms by which transformative experiences and practices might influence the development of compassion and altruism.     

哲学性向、生活事件与精神信仰关系的研究

该文从实证的角度,探讨哲学性向、生活事件与精神信仰的关系。研究表明:1)哲学性向对宗教、神灵、金钱、家族崇拜起负向作用;对政治、国家和民族主义起正向作用。2)生活事件对神灵、生命和家庭起负向预测作用;生活事件通过与哲学性向的交互作用对民族信仰起预测作用。