Os construtos religiosidade, espiritualidade e saúde mental sob a luz das terapias cognitivo-comportamentais

Abstract

The connection among the constructs: religiosity, spirituality and mental health, occurs in various moments of the human history. When speaking about the notions concerning mental health (the promotion of well being, the prevention of mental disorders, the treatment and rehabilitation of those with mental illness), the concepts of religiosity and spirituality may be frequently related to them, due to the historical connection of these three concepts. Religiosity and spirituality refer to the human relation with the transcendental, involving specific beliefs, practices and symbols which mediate this relation, and despite the fact that these concepts may be sometimes considered the same, even in the academic field, they do present differences among themselves. Religiosity can be defined as an organized system of beliefs, practices, rituals and symbols, which helps man connect himself to sacred, in a formal and systematized way, on the other hand, although spirituality deals with an individual search for answers and some understanding about life, its meaning and relation with the sacred, it may or may not lead to some kind of religious ritual or any specific religious group. The intention of this research was, by reviewing national and international material, to describe how the concepts of religiosity and spirituality, and their link with mental health are treated in recent works which make use of the Cognitive-Behaviorist Therapy (CBT) point of view, by comparing articles with different focuses, found both in CBT specialized magazines and others. The bibliographical research was done in online magazines, found in six different data bases: PePSIC - Periódicos Eletrônicos em Psicologia, PubMed; MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online), SciELO Scientific Electronic Library Online, Science Direct; Elsevier; Springerlink. 34 articles, published in the last 15 years, were gathered and carefully analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. From the collected articles, 65% is international material and 35% is national material; 82% being theoretical researches and 18% relating religious cognition to mental health. It may be noticed that the selected articles discuss the association between religiosity, spirituality and mental health, pointing out their relation with some specific mental disorders (humor disorders and the overuse of alcohol), most of the times proving to have a beneficial overall preventive result. The articles also discuss the role of religion regarding clinical disorders and stressful events, again presenting most of the times to have beneficial results to the patient. There is no CBT specialized national material with this specific focus, and albeit international material is being more frequently published, there are still few references, showing a strong need for new studies on the topic, for a more profound understanding on those constructs, which are very commonly seen among the population in general and which seem to have a great importance to this very population.