The current study tested a non-linear model of religious coping among Black patients with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). We predicted that moderate prayer and church attendance would be associated with less severe affective and sensory ratings of pain, lower levels of psychopathology, and less frequent care utilization. The participants were 67 SCD patients, mean age 36.82 ± 11.47 (range 18–70) of which 45% were men. Using ANOVA procedures, our results indicated a main effect for the frequency of prayer which showed significant differences for anxiety and hostility. Post-hoc t tests revealed that participants who endorsed moderate frequency of prayer reported significantly less anxiety and hostility, relative to participants who reported high or low frequency of prayer. However, participants who endorsed moderate levels of prayer also reported a significantly higher frequency of visits to the emergency department, relative to participants who reported high or low frequency of prayer. However, reports of pain and psychopathology were more linear with participants who reported the highest frequency of church attendance having the highest reports, moderate among those with moderate frequency of church attendance, and lowest among those with infrequent church attendance. These findings challenge and extend the traditional linear conceptualization of religious coping on clinical outcomes among patients with SCD. Directions for future research are discussed
While the life-threatening nature of severe chemical burns requires an immediate focus on the physical status, long-term psychological functioning in these patients with now concurrent pathology often receives much less attention. A variety of reactions and adjustment issues may present following a burn injury. Treating the psychological aspects is often complicated and difficult, but even more so when the patient has pre-existing psychiatric illness. The current article describes the psychological treatment of an African American patient with chemical burn and significant pre-existing psychopathology in a community mental health setting. The authors purport that a comprehensive treatment approach to burn related injury
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.