Spiritual Influences on Ability to Engage in Self-Care Activities among Older African Americans

Abstract

The influence of spiritual factors on the ability of African-American elders to carry out instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) independent of age, gender, education, and self-rated health is explored using the religion-health explanatory model in a cross-sectional sample of 96 African-American community dwelling adults 62 to 93 years of age. The Reed spiritual perspective (SPS) and self-transcendence (STS) scales are used to study spiritual factors (Reed, 1991). The typical respondent was 75 years of age, female, widowed with 10.4 years of education. Self-rated health and age are strongly related to IADL in models that include the other variables (R2 = 0.41, p < 0.01). Those who are younger and those who self-report better health have higher IADL scores than those without these characteristics. Spiritual factors are significantly related to IADL in a model that includes an interaction of STS with education (R2= 0.50). Among the least educated, STS is associated with higher scores of IADL. Addition of the interaction to the model resulted in a significant positive association of both STS and education with IADL. SPS was unrelated to IADL. Caregivers concerned with functional ability may want to consider interventions based on increasing a sense of self-transcendence, and to consider educational level as a potential moderator of this relationship. Criticism of the religion-health literature has suggested that putative health effects of religion may be exaggerated, because of failure to take confounding variables into account (Sloan, Bagiella, & Powell, 1999). However, this study and a recent survey by Musick, House, and Williams (2004) are evidence that it is just as likely that health benefits of religion would be hidden by confounders as that they would be exaggerated by them.

The Role of Spiritual Experience, Forgiveness, and Religious Support on the General Well-Being of Older Adults

“…Finally, like previous research, this current study found that older people with little education are significantly associated with lower self-control, and older people who had a high school diploma are more likely to have lower anxiety, lower depression, higher self-control, higher vitality, and higher general health than others (Park et al, 2008;Upchurch & Mueller, 2005;Yoon & Lee, 2007). In particular, older adults who are African American are significantly associated with lower general health than whites.…”

“…In addition, some studies found that demographic characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, age, and education are significantly associated with the subjective well-being of older adults (Curtis, Sales, Sullivan, Grays, & Hedricks, 2005;Fitzpatrick & Tran, 2002;Winzelberg, Williams, Preisser, Zimmerman, & Sloane, 2005). Particularly, Upchurch and Mueller (2005) reported that educational attainment is a key factor that influences the health of older adults. People who have a higher education are more likely to carry out the instrumental activities of daily living.…”

Stress, Spiritual, and Support Coping, and Psychological Well-Being Among Older Adults in Assisted Living

“…They establish the close association between the religious/spiritual commitments of older adults and their subjective sense of well-being and physical health. Much of the recent research has examined the effects of specific dimension of religion/spirituality (forgiveness, religious support networks, transpersonal experiences) or general religious/spiritual orientations of older adults on such factors as life satisfaction, depression, emotional distress, happiness, or physical health (Bono, McCullough, & Root, 2008;Coleman et al, 2007;Ellison & Fan, 2008;Jang, Bergman, Schonfeld, & Molinari, 2006;Morano & King, 2005;Park et al, 2008;Upchurch & Mueller, 2005). Overall, these studies have tended to draw their sampling frame from the general population of older adults in terms of such interpersonal and demographic markers as the rural elderly, frail elderly, widowed or bereaved elderly, or Native American and African American elderly.…”

The effect of peer support group on self-transcendence in patients undergoing haemodialysis

“…However, the study on improving the self-transcendence level and positive attitude to take care of the elderly in nursing students showed that the self-transcendence level had no meaningful changes before and after intervention (Chen and Walsh, 2009;Lamet et al, 2011). The studies showed that self-transcendence has a significant effect on increasing self-care in patients (Mellors et al, 1997;Upchurch and Mueller, 2005), having goals in life (Nygren et al, 2005), and life quality in patients with incurable diseases (Jadid-Milani, 2012). Therefore, considering the controversies about the quality and quantity of nursing intervention on self-transcendence level in studies, this study was conducted to determine the effect of supportive counterparts group on improving self-transcendence of patients undergoing hemodialysis.…”