{"id":201,"date":"2011-03-02T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T11:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/03\/if-god-loves-you-why-take-medicine.html"},"modified":"2014-11-03T18:35:24","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T17:35:24","slug":"if-god-loves-you-why-take-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/03\/if-god-loves-you-why-take-medicine.html","title":{"rendered":"If God loves you, why take medicine?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

The relationship between religion and medicine is uneasy. Those rare cases where parents refuse to allow their children to get treatment get a lot of coverage, but it\u2019s the subtler effects that interest me.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re opened.<\/p>\n

Sarah Finocchario-Kessler<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

She found that people who put themselves in God\u2019s hands really were less likely to take their medicine.<\/p>\n

To be precise, people who used a passive religious deferral coping style (e.g. \u201cI don\u2019t try much of anything; simply expect God to take control\u201d) were less likely to take their medicine as often as they were supposed to.\u00a0 On the other hand,\u00a0 collaborative religious coping \u201cI work together with God as partners\u201d or self-directing religious coping (e.g., \u201cI make decisions about what to do without God\u2019s help\u201d had no effect on whether people took their medicines.<\/p>\n

The biggest effect was with those people who scored high on the \u201cGod as locus of health control\u201d measure \u2013 that means people who agreed with statements like \u201cWhether or not my HIV disease improves is up to God.\u201d
\nAlthough 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.<\/p>\n

This study is interesting because these aren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, they stayed in the study right to the end, and did take their medicine most of the time. It\u2019s just that they were more likely than others to \u2018forget\u2019 it.<\/p>\n

Now, this is a complicated picture in other ways. People who are at death\u2019s door (unlike the mostly healthy people in this study) seem to be more likely to ask for \u2018heroic\u2019 interventions<\/a> to try to keep them alive if they have strong beliefs in God\u2019s will.<\/p>\n

Maybe confronting your own imminent death triggers some reconsiderations about the mysterious workings of the almighty!<\/p>\n

\n

\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>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<\/span> (2), 103-11 PMID: 21235403<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The relationship between religion and medicine is uneasy. Those rare cases where parents refuse to allow their children to get treatment get a lot of coverage, but it\u2019s the subtler effects that interest me. One recent study looked at whether people with HIV took their medicine as they were supposed to. Most trials of new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIf God loves you, why take medicine?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The relationship between religion and medicine is uneasy. 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