Health Help-Seeking Behaviour in Spiritual Healing Practice: Records from the Panacea Society’s Healing Department, 1924–1997

Why people seek help is a question shared by both health psychologists and scholars of spiritual healing. This overlap, however, has gone unexplored. This article shows convergence between health help-seeking behaviours in spiritual healing and secular professional health services. It does so by dra...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:  
Bibliographische Detailangaben
VerfasserInnen: Williams, Ryan J. (VerfasserIn) ; Watts, Fraser N. 1946- (VerfasserIn) ; Lockhart, Alastair (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
Verfügbarkeit prüfen: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Lade...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Veröffentlicht: Springer Science + Business Media B. V. 2022
In: Journal of religion and health
Jahr: 2022, Band: 61, Heft: 3, Seiten: 2417-2432
weitere Schlagwörter:B Health Belief Model
B Spiritual/faith healing
B Help-seeking
B Ritual
B religious participation
B gender differences
Online Zugang: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Why people seek help is a question shared by both health psychologists and scholars of spiritual healing. This overlap, however, has gone unexplored. This article shows convergence between health help-seeking behaviours in spiritual healing and secular professional health services. It does so by drawing on the archival records from the Panacea Society in Bedford, England, which began an international healing ministry by post-amassing over 120,000 correspondents from 93 different countries. Archives from the Panacea Society’s Healing Department containing records of the self-reported effects of the prescribed water-taking healing ritual were used to investigate variables related to help-seeking for health problems through spiritual healing. A sample of over 10% of the available records (n = 7192) contained data from 40,627 letters written over a 73-year period from 48 different countries. In line with research from health psychology, and specifically the Health Belief Model, findings showed that those who were older, female, and receiving perceived benefits from treatment were more likely to engage in help-seeking.
ISSN:1573-6571
Enthält:Enthalten in: Journal of religion and health
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10943-020-01044-1