A GENERAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE IMPACT THAT RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL BELIEFS HAVEWHILE ADAPTING TO NEOPLASTIC DISEASE.
Keywords:
religious orientation, religious coping, the state of spiritual well-being, neoplastic disease, adaptation to neoplastic disease.Abstract
Apparently, religious orientation, religious and spiritual beliefs are regarded as important factors in adapting to the disease.Religious orientation as opposed to religious coping is seen as having a lower impact on one’s adapting to the disease from the perspective of life quality. It is supposed that both religious orientation and religious coping are equally efficient in increasing one’s life quality.The aim of the research is to highlight how the spiritual (inner peace, faith, meaning) and religious factors (religious coping and religious orientation), as predictors of increasing quality of life, contribute to increasing the quality of life of cancer patients.The sample is made up of cancer patients (161), mixed sample, women and men, between the ages of 30 and 70, admitted to the Radiotherapy of the Municipal Hospital of Timisoara. We are using the following instruments: Brief Measure of Religious Coping (RCOPE- Pargament K.I., SmithB.W. , Koenig H.G. and Perez L., 1998), Quality of Life in Adult Cancer (QLAC - Nancy E. A., Smith K.W., McGraw S., SmithR.G, PetronisV.M and Carver C.R.), Religious Orientation Scale Revised (ROS-R- Gorsuch R.L. and McPherson S.E., 1989), Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Spiritual Wellbeing Scale (Andrea L. Canada, Patricia E. Murphy, George Fitchett, Amy H. Peterman şi Leslie R. Schover, in 2007).Hierarchical multiple regression was used in data analysis.The results of the study indicate that the factors with the highest weight in explaining the majority of the quality of life are: personal extrinsic religious orientation, negative religious coping and inner peace.
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