A Process-Based Approach to Responding to Parents or Guardians Who Hope for a Miracle

Bibler, Trevor M.; Stahl, Devan; Fantus, Sophia; Lion, Alex

doi:10.1542/peds.2019-2319

Cited by 7 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Depending, then, on this mediation between the impulse to search for meaning, as something that is at the base of belief, and respect for the different ways of achieving it (whether in one religion or another; whether in religion and/or in science), the relationships between patients and professionals may contribute, in a greater or lesser extension, to a more or less "strategic" destiny of the belief in the miracle in the health context. In the same direction, one can understand the effectiveness of the model proposed by Bibler et al (2020). After all, a dynamic understanding of the relationships between these three dimensions-religion, religiosity, and spirituality-can open new paths in the attitude of the professionals themselves when dealing with patients' religiosities, expanding their respective abilities to embrace the dimension of meaning that accompanies them, favoring a more "integrated" approach between the religious/spiritual perspective of the miracle and the perspective of medical care.…”

Section: Belief In Miracles As An Expression Of Spirituality Religios...mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…For assessing the impact of belief in miracles in health settings, a third model of a pragmatic nature was also developed from clinical experience and, especially, more applicable to caregivers of gravely ill children was developed by Bibler et al (2020). According to this model, the ways by which beliefs in miracles can be assessed, from the standpoint of their concrete outcomes in healthcare settings, could be classified into three modalities:…”

Section: Proposed Models For Understanding the Role Of Miracles In He...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Praying for a Miracle Part II: Idiosyncrasies of Spirituality and Its Relations With Religious Expressions in Health

2022

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As a continuation of the previous paper, Praying for a Miracle – Negative or Positive Impacts on Health Care, published in this research topic, this second paper aims at delving deeper into the same theme, but now from a simultaneously practical and conceptual approach. With that in mind, we revisit three theoretical models based on evidence, through which we can understand the role of a miracle in hospital settings and assess its impact in health contexts. For each of the models described, we seek to illustrate the possible outcomes of belief in miracles as a modality of religious coping in situations of stress and suffering experienced by patients and caregivers in the face of gloomy diagnoses on coming across the limits of medicine to revert certain illnesses (e.g., child cancer) or biological conditions (e.g., fetal malformation). We posit that the judgment about how such a mechanism is healthy or not for each of the people involved (patient, caregiver, and/or health professional) depends on the modulation between the conception of the miracle adopted by the patient and/or caregiver and the concrete outcomes of the way of responding to the situations that accompany the gravity of the illness or condition. To better understand this process of psychological modulation that accompanies belief in miracles, we revisit the concepts of spirituality, religiosity, and religion, pointing out the connections and distinctions between them from a phenomenological perspective. We then present a conceptual model that takes these connections and distinctions into consideration to foster an understanding of miracles, their relations with the diversity of experiences of people who meet in hospital settings (patients, caregivers, and health professionals), and their respective impacts on healthcare.

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Section: Belief In Miracles As An Expression Of Spirituality Religios...mentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Proposed Models For Understanding the Role Of Miracles In He...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Praying for a Miracle Part II: Idiosyncrasies of Spirituality and Its Relations With Religious Expressions in Health

2022

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“…However, when the belief delegates the function of caring for the individual to the Divine, the results may be harmful. From this point of view, the hope in a miracle, much more frequent in critical situations ( Hayward et al, 2016 ; Borges and Petean, 2018 ; Bibler et al, 2020 ), is considered an external and passive way of religious control which would bring harm to the health of the individual. On the other hand, the above authors emphasize that, in end-of-life situations or cases of incurable diseases, delegating destiny to God could often mean acceptance of the outcome and avoidance of the prolongation of invasive and unsuccessful treatment.…”

Section: Belief In Miracles Under Multiple Aspects and Their Differen...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Bibler et al (2020) recently described a new classification of belief in miracles for caregivers of gravely ill children in the following way: (1) integrated: patients see the clinical state from a religious standpoint and bring religious objects, and may spark off a confrontation with science; (2) Procurators: the child’s caregivers do not depend totally on the religious community and the miracle may assume other meanings beside cure, for example, the well-being of the child; (3) Adaptable: they manifest the feature of having faith but adapt to religions, do not like to talk about miracles, generally, and see the care given to patients with distrust.…”

Section: Belief In Miracles Under Multiple Aspects and Their Differen...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The prospect of a miracle or the act of praying for a miracle was one of the strategies of SRC included in the scale in question through the affirmation “I prayed for a miracle.” In fact, hope in a miracle is much more frequent in health contexts ( Green, 2015 ; Dossey, 2018 ; Bibler et al, 2020 ) and nurtured by patients, family, and sometimes by the professionals who care for them. This manner of confronting illness may pose a veritable challenge to health professionals and has been frequently described as having a negative feature that portrays a kind of shying away from reality, creating fantastic thoughts ( Vasconcelos and Petean, 2009 ; Borges and Petean, 2018 ), or implies a delegating of the grappling with moments of crises outside of oneself (to the Divine, Sacred, or God) to prayer, which, according to some authors, is anchored on the wish to modify the will of God in favor of the will of the patient ( Panzini, 2004 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Praying for a Miracle: Negative or Positive Impacts on Health Care?

Leal

Nwora²,

Melo

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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The belief in miracle, as a modality of spiritual/religious coping (SRC) strategy in the face of stress and psychic suffering, has been discussed in psychological literature with regard to its positive or negative role on the health and well-being of patients and family members. In contemporary times, where pseudo-conflicts between religion and science should have been long overcome, there is still some tendency of interpreting belief in miracle – as the possibility of a cure granted by divine intervention, modifying the normal course of events in a bleak medical diagnosis – as having unhealthy impacts in the care and treatment of health. This position seeks to find a base in the three characteristics of hoping in a miracle, frequently pointed out by psychological literature: (a) it would imply a negation of reality instead of its confrontation; (b) it would be a coping strategy focused on emotion instead of the problem; (c) it would imply seeking to modify the supposed desire of God by extra-natural facts. In this study, we shall critically discuss this position and the dangers of its crystallization by the use of SRC scales in which the act of praying for a miracle is previously classified as a negative strategy. We revisit some tendencies in psychological literature about the subject, taking into consideration the various facets of miracle, sociocultural facts, elements of idiographic nature, and their profound outcomes in the lives of people especially in health contexts. We illustrate the dangers of a hasty generalization of the results of nomothetic studies about the role of belief in miracle with two examples of research in the Brazilian context: one carried out with pregnant women with fetal malformation and the other with family members caring for children and adolescents with cancer under chemotherapeutic treatment. In both studies, the results do not confirm the predominance of the negative aspects associated with the act of praying for a miracle, which we discuss and analyze in light of the phenomenological perspective. In this perspective, “pray for a miracle”, as experienced by patients and caregivers, can be recognized as an act of openness to life (instead of isolation in a bleak perspective), bolstering hope, and the resignification of reality in the psyche.

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Responding Well to Spiritual Worldviews: A Taxonomy for Clinical Ethicists

Bibler

2022

HEC Forum

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A Process-Based Approach to Responding to Parents or Guardians Who Hope for a Miracle

Cited by 7 publications

References 49 publications

Praying for a Miracle Part II: Idiosyncrasies of Spirituality and Its Relations With Religious Expressions in Health

Praying for a Miracle Part II: Idiosyncrasies of Spirituality and Its Relations With Religious Expressions in Health

Praying for a Miracle: Negative or Positive Impacts on Health Care?

Responding Well to Spiritual Worldviews: A Taxonomy for Clinical Ethicists

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