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| Mrs P thanks God for her recovery from a tragic accident |
So here's what they did. They took 88 adults who had had a serious brain injury sometime in the past 20 years, and they asked a friend or relative to fill out a standard questionnaire on how well they can perform normal daily activities, like dressing or meeting with friends.
They also asked them about their 'Religious Well-being'. This is a questionnaire that asks them how much they agree with statements like “I have a personally meaningful relationship with God” and “I believe that God is concerned about my problems”.
Well, the headline news is that the higher they rated their religious well-being, the more likely their friend/relative was to say that they were functional. And so, conclude the authors:
Feeling supported by a higher power likely enhances positive outcomes in part through the mechanism of enhancing feelings of general support.
But hold on a moment here! Isn't there the little problem of timing? Brain injury occurs some time in the past (10 years on average), and now they ask whether the individual thinks that god loves them? Should we be surprised that the ones who have the worst disability also feel the most abandoned by their god?
In fact, this is such an obvious interpretation of these data that I'm surprised they don't mention it in the paper. Still, it all goes to show that you should take press releases with a pinch of salt!
Waldron-Perrine B, Rapport LJ, Hanks RA, Lumley M, Meachen SJ, & Hubbarth P (2011). Religion and spirituality in rehabilitation outcomes among individuals with traumatic brain injury. Rehabilitation psychology, 56 (2), 107-16 PMID: 21574729
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
Correlation (cough) not causation (double cough). Here's another potential bit of research - see if people how have a traumatic injury become more religious afterwards.
ReplyDeleteI've been working with people who have survived brain injury for over 15 years and many of them find God. But they are brain injured and their ability to reality test has been impaired.
ReplyDeleteSpookily enough there was a study which found that people with brain damage were more spiritual.
ReplyDeleteI'm late, but... I have a fair bit of brain damage caused by a neurodegenerative disease. I do think the damage (or possibly a reaction to the sudden change in ability level that got me diagnosed) did make me briefly "more spiritual", but as far as I can tell, further damage also made me irreligious. Sudden loss of religion was far from the only new neurological symptom at the time. I suspect the loss of religion is linked to my now very limited ability to understand people when what they say things that are, logically speaking, nonsense. All of what had been my religion very suddenly didn't make any sense to me anymore.
ReplyDeleteI know there are studies and case reports of people becoming more spiritual or "finding religion" linked with brain damage and various neurological disfunction. I wonder if there aren't a number of cases the other way around. In a place as heavily invested in religion as the US, I've been afraid to tell those around me. Dealing with a disability, especially one that effects the mind, is hard enough without getting people all worked up over religion. It's the one big neurological event that I've never reported; I wonder if there are others like me in that. There can be big incentive to lie about religion here, probably even more if you're already treated as lesser.