The study's results tally with past research linking religious involvement or spiritual experience to well-being.
Dr. Harold Koenig, a researcher at Duke University Medical Center, said that the study involving patients treated at one hospital over 15 months is unique in that it links religious and spiritual practice to the need for long-term health care.
"This doesn't prove that religion improves health," Koenig told Reuters Health. But he said there does seem to be a connection between belief and health which researchers are seeking to sort out.
The Archives of Internal Medicine published the study in July. The patients who most often practiced religious activities in their personal lives or felt "spiritual experiences" spent an average of fewer than 12 days in long-term care. That compared with nearly 27 days among patients who reported the fewest private religious practices.
The relationships existed regardless of the patients' physical health, researchers say.
This study is one of many exploring the effects of belief and spiritual practices on health.
Earlier studies by Koenig and others found, for instance, that older adults, particularly women, who attend religious services at least once a week seemed to have a survival advantage over those attending less often. A 1998 study found that older medical patients who attended church weekly or more often were less likely to have been admitted to a hospital during the previous year than those who attended less often.
Michael W. Parker of the University of Alabama's School of Social Work and Center for Mental Health and Aging recently studied with Koenig and others the effects of religion on depression and general mental health. A study found that older people in five Alabama counties who scored high on three measures of "religiosity" reported having fewer symptoms of depression and better mental health than did those who scored low on the measures.
The measures of religiosity were defined as organized, non-organized and intrinsic. Researchers published their study in Aging & Mental Health in September 2003.
The study also found, however, that those who scored high on only one of the three measures reported fewer symptoms, too. The researchers concluded that the relationship of "religiosity with mental health in older adults is complex" and more study is needed.
Such studies are changing the way some health-care professionals do their work.
Parker and others wrote that, based on research, clinicians should encourage positive spirituality for their patients. Clinical workers should learn to access their patients' spiritual health and "to provide ... desired spiritual intervention," Parker and others said.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations now requires a spiritual assessment in its regulations. Also, half of medical schools in the United States now provide such training, according to a 1998 report.
Assessments help determine what "coping mechanisms" a patient has. He or she might want prayer if the clinician shares a similar belief system or might like referral to a chaplain or pastor, said Parker and his co-researchers. But they also noted that some religious beliefs and activities "can adversely affect both mental and physical health."
On the Net: Duke University, www.dukespiritualityandhealth.org.
By Melanie B. Smith
DAILY Religion Writer
msmith@decaturdaily.com