One recent study looked at whether people with HIV took their medicine as they were supposed to. Most trials of new drugs monitor this, and it can be done very easily simply using special bottles that record each time they're opened.
Sarah Finocchario-Kessler, at the University of Kansas, used data from one such drug trial to see what the effect of religious beliefs (and other psychological factors) was on medication taking.
She found that people who put themselves in God's hands really were less likely to take their medicine.
To be precise, people who used a passive religious deferral coping style (e.g. "I don’t try much of anything; simply expect God to take control") were less likely to take their medicine as often as they were supposed to. On the other hand, collaborative religious coping "I work together with God as partners" or self-directing religious coping (e.g., "I make decisions about what to do without God’s help" had no effect on whether people took their medicines.
The biggest effect was with those people who scored high on the "God as locus of health control" measure - that means people who agreed with statements like "Whether or not my HIV disease improves is up to God."
Although this had no effect on medication taking at 3 months, the halfway point of the study, by the end of the study (at 6 months) people who scored high on this measure were 42% less likely to be taking their medication regularly.
This study is interesting because these aren't folks who have any crazy ideas that medicine is useless. Remember, they signed up to take part in a drug study, presumably because they thought they might benefit.
What's more, they stayed in the study right to the end, and did take their medicine most of the time. It's just that they were more likely than others to 'forget' it.
Now, this is a complicated picture in other ways. People who are at death's door (unlike the mostly healthy people in this study) seem to be more likely to ask for 'heroic' interventions to try to keep them alive if they have strong beliefs in God's will.
Maybe confronting your own imminent death triggers some reconsiderations about the mysterious workings of the almighty!
Finocchario-Kessler S, Catley D, Berkley-Patton J, Gerkovich M, Williams K, Banderas J, & Goggin K (2011). Baseline predictors of ninety percent or higher antiretroviral therapy adherence in a diverse urban sample: the role of patient autonomy and fatalistic religious beliefs. AIDS patient care and STDs, 25 (2), 103-11 PMID: 21235403
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
What I'd love to see is the correlation between the use of psychiatric drugs and religious belief.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I like that. This way, the religious nuts could simply Darwinate themselves out of existence.
ReplyDeleteSilly people.
Could this data also allow for this model:
ReplyDeleteWe form our vision of "God" and relationship to "him" around our personality and propensities.
So, not that our religious ideas affect us but we affect our religious ideas.
I recently posted on that theme Sabio:
ReplyDeleteA neurotic relationship with God
@ Stuart
ReplyDeleteYour article, if I read it correctly in the fog of my head cold, seems to imply that only distortions of Christianity come from psychiatric disorders. Maybe some of the original writings came from twisted psyche also. What do you think?
I would have said the opposite were true.
ReplyDeleteReligious people are trained in repeating useless thing: they call it "liturgy". And taking pills for month is surley a repeating thing (I hope it's not as useless this time)
Religious people are more afraid of death. So why miss an opportunity to stay alive ?
It could be because HIV is a condition that is known to have no escape, so religious people feel compelled to prove themselves that they're truly belivers. And they do so by taking risks (such skipping pills), which is a non-fakeable signal. Remember that in US version of christianity is the strength of your faith that will earn you heaven, while in Europe is what you've done.
Would be interesting to repeat such a study in Europe, or with a cronic, non life-threating illness.
It might simply be that they are more optimistic. With no imminent death, they are optimistic that God will save them so don't see the drugs as necessary. When death is imminent, they are confident that God will save them, so opt for heroic last-ditch medical interventions.
ReplyDelete