Studies of spirituality in initially healthy people have shown a survival advantage, yet there are fewer research studies in the medically ill, despite the widespread use of spirituality/religiousness to cope with serious physical illness. In addition, many studies have used limited measures such as religious service attendance.
We aimed to examine if, independent of medication adherence, the use of spirituality/religiousness to cope with HIV predicts survival over 17 years.
This was a longitudinal study, started in 1997. Study materials were administered semi annually.
A diverse sample of 177 HIV patients initially in the mid-stage of disease (150-500 CD4-cells/mm(3); no prior AIDS-defining symptoms) participated in the study.
Participants were administered a battery of psychosocial questionnaires and a blood draw. They completed interviews and essays to assess current stressors. Spiritual coping (overall/strategies) was rated by qualitative content analysis of interviews regarding stress and coping with HIV, and essays.
Controlling for medical variables (baseline CD4/viral load) and demographics, Cox regression analyses showed that overall positive spiritual coping significantly predicted greater survival over 17 years (mortality HR = 0.56, p = 0.039). Findings held even after controlling for health behaviors (medication adherence, substance use) and social support. Particular spiritual coping strategies that predicted longer survival included spiritual practices (HR = 0.26, p < 0.001), spiritual reframing (HR = 0.27, p = 0.006), overcoming spiritual guilt (HR = 0.24, p < 0.001), spiritual gratitude (HR = 0.40, p = 0.002), and spiritual empowerment (HR = 0.52, p = 0.024), indicating that people using these strategies were 2-4 times more likely to survive.
To our knowledge this is the first study showing a prospective relationship of spiritual coping in people who are medically ill with survival over such a long period of time, and also specifically identifies several strategies of spirituality that may be beneficial.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 30. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 June 2019.
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#1,445,299
of 27,533,884 outputs
Outputs from Journal of General Internal Medicine
#1,097
of 8,653 outputs
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#22,184
of 314,195 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of General Internal Medicine
#15
of 97 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,533,884 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 8,653 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 22.3. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 97 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its contemporaries.
