engleski

Religious Coping and Stressful Life Situations

Background. The goal of religious coping is in the change of consciousness induced by transcendental experience: to be able to forgive, to encourage altruism, to work on changing one’s own behavior. Accordingly, numerous studies have confirmed that the practice of spirituality can mitigate the negative effects of traumatic experiences (Seeman, Dubin and Seeman, 2003) ; that personal spiritual experience has a positive effect on the physiological functioning of the body and serves to preserve the nervous and immune systems (Levin, 2001) ; that personal transcendental experience reduces the harmful effects of stressful circumstances and may positively affect the mood of an individual, his overall health and well-being, and, finally, that personal spirituality helps an individual to preserve his mental health. Purpose. Thea im of the presentation is to analyse stress situations through religious coping and mental health of the individual. Method and Result. The qualitative methodology and the method of case study were applied. The rationale for choosing a case study approach is based on the above identified advantages. In particular, we have framed this case as an instrumental case study, that is one which is presented specifically for the generation that has a new understanding of the phenomenon of religious coping. Amata’s story is about her experience with religious coping, self-identification and personal spirituality, the case of how religious coping helps to activate one’s own power, find comfort, reveal a sense of life, accept life circumstances and overcome them, as well as to develop one’s own resistance to the oncoming difficulties and stressful situations. To process data, the method of qualitative analysis was used and for the organisation of the collected data, the method of descriptive analysis. Descriptive coding and content analysis techniques were used to develop an iterative code book related to religious coping. Research results show that religious coping directly affect the health of people, promoting both physical and mental health, and has a positive impact on the overall quality of life. An intense life of faith can be recognised as very helpful in maintaining mental health in stressful situations.

Religious Coping, Stressful Life Situations, quality of life

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