Training on religion as a lever towards mental and physical health Erasmus Project

Project Title

Training on religion as a lever towards mental and physical health

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Inclusion – equity; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

CONCEPT
Oman and Thorensen (2003) point out that health psychology should cultivate an understanding of how religion and spirituality are felt, lived, and experienced by the populations of interest. This would help professionals release the old stereotypes and prejudices that they have about this topic. The difficulty in conceptualizing spirituality/religion comes from the multidimensionality of these concepts (Miller & Thorensen, 2003), and extends to the problem of how exactly spirituality/religion influence health. This, in turn, emphasizes the fact that there are multiple interpretations of how spirituality/religion influences health and a number of pathways through which this happens. Four most prominent such pathways have been proposed: health behaviors (through prescribing a certain diet and/or discouraging the abuse of alcoholic beverages, smoking, etc., religion can protect and promote a healthy lifestyle), social support (people can experience social contact with co-religionists and have a web of social relations that can help and protect whenever the case), psychological states (religious people can experience a better mental health, more positive psychological states, more optimism and faith, which in turn can lead to a better physical state due to less stress) and ‘psi’ influences (supernatural laws that govern ‘energies’ not currently comprehended by science but possibly understandable at some point by science). Because spirituality/religion influence health through these pathways, they act in an indirect way on health (Oman & Thorensen, 2002).

From a multi-religious point of view, mental and physical health is not solely the core task of doctors, but is also an important aspect that is supported by religion. In this context, our project intends to provide a training that will support caregivers and other professionals in various domains to use religion as a lever towards the mental and physical health of their patients/clients (people that are often in need of mental and physical health support).

TRANSNATIONAL
The stories that we find back in the holy books of Islam (Quran) and Christianity (Bible) teach us that people consist of two distinctive parts: the spiritual and the physical ones. The care about these both parts is very important and is as such also stated in all main religions: Islam and Christianity (Catholic Church, Orthodox and Protestant church). At the heart of these religions lies the understanding that care about the person is the main purpose.

AIMS & OBJECTIVES
Religion and medicine have a long, intertwined, tumultuous history, going back thousands of years. However, nowadays, many service providing people are not sufficiently trained to go much beyond taking a religious history, directing resources, and perhaps supporting patients’ religious beliefs and practices. When spiritual needs are evident, often patients are referred to a person who is competently trained to meet those needs. Our project aims to ensure that e.g. care staff is available that is adequately trained to meet these religious needs.

Exactly the recovery of the link between medicine and religion is the innovative aspect of the project. One of the main objectives of the current project is to overcome the lack of connection and to improve the support to the people in need by well-trained professions who are aware and embrace the positive impact of religion on the mental and physical health.

Via the training provided and training materials developed the consortium will try to help the trainers and trainees to find the wellbeing (train the trainer concept). Additionally we will help our target group of end-users to understand the different religions and to maintain a tolerance between the people with different religions.

TARGET GROUPS
Medical staff (doctors, nurses, hygienists, and students/practitioners in social medicine, etc.), psychologists, pedagogical staff, students from Medical Schools (bachelor), students in pedagogy, students in ethnology, theology departments, practitioners who work with people with dependences (drugs, alcohol), practitioners who work with people who have been subjected to home aggression or were victim of illegal human trafficking.

BENEFICIARIES
Patients in hospitals, inmates/prisoners, addicts, people with disabilities, people in need.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES
1. IO1 Conceptualizing Spirituality and Religion and Methodological Considerations through Collection of Case Studies
2. IO2 Curriculum exploring The Relationship between Spirituality/Religion and Health
3. IO3 Online and mobile support platform with reference materials
5. IO4 Interaction/Quest questionnaire scales to measure religion as self-assessment tool for trainers/trainees

IOs will be assessed and evaluated in Turkey, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece and Poland among target groups in aforementioned countries with at least 30 participants per country.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 179100 Eur

Project Coordinator

ERCIYES UNIVERSITESI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Chrzescijanska Akademia Teologiczna w Warszawie
• PHOENIXKM BVBA
• Orthodox Academy of Crete
• SDRUZENIJE NA NA RABOTESHTITE S HORA S UVREZHDANIYA
• GAZI UNIVERSITESI