Sunday, August 20, 2017

Faith and Health


"For people who are going through great suffering and for whom life is very very difficult, I deal with these people every day. I'm a clinician- I take care of older adults, younger adults with chronic pain syndromes, with horrible depression, with very difficult life circumstances, and religion is probably the most powerful coping behaviour that I have ever seen. More powerful than the drugs that I prescribe, more powerful than the psychotherapy that I do. I think that religious faith and the consequences of that, the tools that it gives you to cope with suffering, to give meaning to suffering, we just have no competition from anything that science, medicine or psychiatry or psychology have. I really think there's nothing that's even close. So those beliefs are very powerful and we shouldn't underestimate them". 

- Dr Harold G. Koenig, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, and Associate Professor of Medicine, Duke University.

Koenig has published over 280 articles in peer reviewed academic journals, as well as numerous books and book chapters, and has been studying for intersection between religious faith and health for decades.