Spiritual Therapy in Coping with Cancer as a Complementary Medical Preventive Practice

Abstract

There are many of methods of treating cancer. However, the concept of curing the cancer is beyond our current knowledge. Some patients who have the cancer may seek an alternative manner of curing their disease. Alternative medicines, such as spiritual and complementary therapy, are able to cure the cancer and, at the least, are safe. Research on the importance of spirituality in cancer care has mainly been performed in geographically heterogeneous populations. The results are limited to these specific religious-cultural contexts and enlightened by contributions from ethnicity and religion. This article focused on the religiousness and spiritual support of cancer patients from diverse and heterogeneous groups around the globe. An electronic search of peer-reviewed articles was systematically performed to obtain the relevant literature with the CINAHL, PsycINFO, and PubMed databases. The keywords included religion, cancer, illness, psychotherapy, and spiritual and alternative treatment/therapies. The inclusion criteria for the reviews were that the documents were original quantitative research and published in English. Articles that were not directly relevant to the present objective were excluded. The present outcome of these review resources suggest that it may be helpful for clinicians to address spirituality, particularly with regard to prevention, healing, and survival of cancer patients. This article indicates that it may be useful for clinical oncologists to be informed of the prevalence of the use of spiritual medicine in their specialized field. In addition, patients should routinely be asked about the use of spiritual medicine as part of every cancer patient’s evaluation.

Spirituality and Prayer on Teacher Stress and Burnout in an Italian Cohort: A Pilot, Before-After Controlled Study

“…Religiousness is a particular form of spirituality that proved to be effective in patients with cardiovascular disease or cancer and their caregivers (Movafagh et al, 2017;Abu et al, 2018;Faccio et al, 2018), as well as in depression and mental health problems (Weber and Pargament, 2014;AbdAleati et al, 2016;Braam and Koenig, 2019). In the literature, there are also some studies showing the effectiveness of prayer to tackle occupational stress and burnout.…”

The Balance of Spiritual and Nutritional Needs Improves the Well-being of Cancer Patients during Chemotherapy

“…It is in line with the results from [6], [7], [8]which states when the patient reaches the end of life, there becomes a need to fulfill spiritual needs. In addition to this, previous research had suggested that spirituality can increase the patient's endurance to mental health crisis after cancer diagnosis and treatment [9]; [10]; [11]. Further, Islamic Psychological Management refers to the religious rituals commonly practiced by Muslims to manage the psychological impact of the disease.…”

Breast Cancer Illness and Spiritual Healing

“…As for Movafagh et al, (2017), the spirituality concept was further examined in the context of health care among cancer patients including breast cancer patients from diverse and heterogeneous populations around the globe. Religion and spiritual therapy were adopted by cancer patients as their coping strategy in dealing with the cancer prognosis and treatment.…”