I never would have imagined that medication and spirituality had anything in common.
But a study out of Rush University Medical Center led by chaplain and assistant professor Patricia Murphy, PhD brings new findings that suggest spirituality can act synergistically with medication to produce better patient outcomes.
For instance, spirituality may be a key factor in improving response to medication for patients diagnosed with clinical depression.
Researchers surveyed 136 adults with major depression or bipolar depression before and after 8 weeks of antidepressant medication treatment.
Patients who reported belief in a personal higher power or a higher power concerned with their well-being were more likely to experience an improvement in depressive symptoms after 8 weeks.
What’s more, patients who scored in the top 33% for overall religious well-being were 75% more likely to show improvement.
Researchers looked to see if hope was a contributing factor but found that hope had no impact on patient outcomes. Belief in a caring higher power alone seemed to increase chances of improvement.
What this study shows is that medication and spirituality can work together to produce stronger results than medication alone.
The study wasn’t randomized or controlled so generalization is limited. On the other hand you can’t randomly assign spiritual beliefs. That said, the results are intriguing.
Have you integrated spirituality into your practice to enhance treatment with your patients? Please leave a comment below.
For a long time, and even still today, I’ve had great resistance to my medication journey and felt that it held me back from awakening to the present moment, my true self and true self expression. However recently with a spiritual emergency and this article I’ve felt a little more confident that I can still blossom and express myself freely on this med even tho i see other people healed from bipolar and off meds. Thank you
When I was a child, I could tell u who was calling every single time the phone rang. As I got older, I could see things before they happened. Somehow someway, I developed into a person that could go out of my body and see the world as a diff place. I would lose days and be on auto pilot my family would say and they always knew when I was in one of these episodes. While there, things would come to me and I would have full conversations I could remember with these light beings I would call them. As I got older, and abused by not only my father but men, I would find myself leaving my body on a regular basis anytime the abuse would start and not being present for it. I learned this quite young. I went on anti depressants and everything was great for a while until about 8 weeks later. Colours were more vibrant. I could hear a pin drop from way across the room. It was like I woke up with superpowers one day I was only on Wellbutrin I thought my psychic abilities were gone boy was I wrong I knew this feeling, and I actually smiled because I had it back as much as it’s protected me in the past the feeling of not wanting it and wanting it at the same time. Almost like I missed it. For a year up to when I started taking the antidepressants I see nothing I couldn’t predict anything. I had no out of body experiences whatsoever and Now three years after taking Wellbutrin and I do it all the time I can walk up to somebody in the grocery store and it’s like they’re the only person that I see And something makes me walk over to them and tell them what I need to tell them. I don’t know if it’s spirits or angels or Demons or what’s going on but without those antidepressants I didn’t have this gift I had lost it and I’m OK with it being back .
I take nortripiline I believe it blocks your power to fight evil spirits but I also know faith conquer all things your fate is your power T.Varra
Evil spirits you mean your mind your thoughts.
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I say absolutely not. Anti-depression drugs shut down your ability to believe in God as much as you did before the drug. A better solution is a TMS machine like the alpha-stim machine. It CURES depression without side effects leaving the faith part of your brain unimpaired.
Wow I must confess you make some very trenhcant points.
As time goes on Christian Science seems less and less extreme and modern medicine as practiced in the US seems more and more insane. Television comercials prompting us to ask our doctors if we should add a second antidepressant medication if we are still feeling depressed on only one. Studies showing little difference between antidepressant and placebo other than increased suicide with the antidepressant. I would like to see a similar study including a group with placebo and one with no meds at all.
If a person has a condition that medicine helps it is always best to attempt to find an option to the Med due to potential side effects. But getting off the drug isn’t always the answer. I know lots of epilepsy patients who need their anti seizure drugs so I have learned how to cut their dosages to the lowest and healthiest, effective dosages. This involves dietary supplementation, breathing practices (better oxygenation, awareness and self control) positive attitudes, and perhaps some supplements to boost the medicines functional power even though less is needed.
Patients must accept their need for medication with compassion and accept their condition and it’ll get a good chance to improves immensely.
Spirituality the general sense we are not alone and can be comforted is good. Theology and organized religion which has united social rules with the belief in a punishing God is much more open to debate.I have a friend who while on her way to hospital in labour let out she had no man, from that point the behaveour of the nursing staff was concerned first with punishing her and lost all duty to keep her in a good frame of mind. The baby died leaving a suspicion that the Irish Catholics concerned are partly responsible for the death. Psychology is less than fifty years away from listing homosexuality as in need of cure, just one up from being evil and some States of America have politicians pandering to the crowds who want it punished, fundametallist Christians follow the Bronze age teacher Moses who authorised homosexual’s death.All in the name of a good society by those who believe in a punishing God. Spirituality is a word which has gained favour to try and keep the good and loss the bad out of religion, but the religions will try and use science embrasing spirituality to “prove” they and their literal intepretation of the Bible is right and start persecuting others again.
i have been working as a therapist for the last 15 years and during this time i have included spiritual awareness therapeutically, with great effect. As a result, i decided to develop a model of therapy that incorporated and provided an easy access point to spirituality. The model is called Insight Focused Therapy.
For clients who include spirituality into their daily lives, incorporating this important resource into therapy can be hugely life changing. i have seen nothing short of, amazing outcomes by doing so. However, for those who have grown up in highly toxic; religious; rigid; punitive environments, incorporating the spiritual can add a complicated layer to the presenting issue. I have found that as with all therapy, a wise approach is to include this topic in the assessment interview and then throughout therapy to remain highly attuned.
Best wishes
Pauline
Thank you for this article. Even ‘tho the example refers to depression, I found that taking meds for cancer plus my spiritual practice has helped to shrink a maglignant tumor. My oncologist is surprised and pleased at how much shrinkage there was prior to surgery.
Just read an interesting article on Niacin and depression…We are an organic machine with requirements from a multitude of natural substances… When something is missing the machines doesn’t work all that well… Faith is a substance, a force that has the ability to discern the body’s needs if the spirit, soul, and body are intact and functioning at a capacity of discernment. Since we are a multi level being then it takes all the beings awareness to be functioning at the same time. The key is the spirit, the source is the mind and the completion is the will… if any component is missing we need to seek professional help to find the missing substance and repair the lack…
Please mention some benefits about the usage of NIACIN. It’s got some fabulous qualities doesn’t it?
Can you mention some of it’s dependable and special qualities.
Thank you for this. Do you think antidepressants prevent you from achieving higher realms when mediating?
from a clients standpoint, I believe in the theory that meds are to stabilize while we do our daily healing. So spirituality or mindfulness benefits any therapy. Acceptance and awareness are part of healing and living.
I see so many suffer but refuse to take mental action and responsibility. You can not heal running from trauma or avoiding it. it only grows.
Online, I have seen so many who believe healing is contained in a pill or a therapist will heal them. It is sad to see them wait and suffer.
Thanks. I think the issue here is not whether spirituality helps medical intervention, but on the nature of the relationship — is it causal, is it merely associative, is the effect related to a unique effect or perhaps a common causal antecedent, what is the strength of the relationship and can factors be modified, what is the clinical significance and how could we practically change outcomes, etc.? Without answering some of those questions, without carefully defining what “spirituality” or “religious well-being” mean, and so forth, the nature of the relationship is sketchy and the conclusions may be too shallow to be useful. As much as we would like to hang our hats on this preliminary investigation, and as much as we want them to reinforce our common-sense observations, I am hoping the investigators learned enough about this matter to investigate it more deeply.
As I have grown in wisdom, I have noticed a pattern of beliefs from my customers who are diabetic or with cancer issues, Their overwhelming statements are……” My doctor told me to take it, Did you ask why? No my doctor told me to take it, Do you know what it is doing to help you or give you more side affects? No my doctor told me to take it.” This is how patients are mesmerized into a behavior that is not life affirming or proactive in partnership in their care. Many doctors do not ask their patients what aspect of their spiritual practice they have been using to help heal themselves,especially prayer, herbs and laying on of hands.
Always Peace
Thank you. I just have been contemplating medicine and it has completely removed me from the wisdom I understand. The medicine closes my mind to anything other than what my eyes see.
SPIRTUALITY DOES NOT AUGMENT MEDICINE!
Spirituality trumps and overcomes the horribly toxic effects medicine has on the body. The individual with an uncompromised hope-belief daily spiritual practice will recover and heal!
When the vessel is full of God’s peace, love, light and joy, what room could possibly be left for anything
toxic.
Yes! This is what I thought as well. I was actually reading these comments to see what others thought about taking antidepressants while having spiritual practices. I am being made to get on antidepressants by my cps worker. What should I do?
Here’s my story. Very unfortunately, my son was born addicted because of me and I have greatly punished myself emotionally because of it. Although he is so happy and healthy, I just still think about it sometimes like how I could have effected him. I cry just thinking about it. 🙁 I was an addict from 15 years old, and on and off until a couple months ago, I am 29.
My cps worker is telling me that I need antidepressants…. although I do not believe I do especially to the extent that she is thinking. She seems.. hmm… like malicious to me in a way. Like she judges me very harshly. She was making fun of how skinny I am, (which I have always been this way) saying that my hair was falling out when its truly not.. thin hair is just my actual hair type, was telling my husband that we shouldn’t be together, calls my husband ‘babe’ right in front of me, tried forcing me to go to a rehab (even though I have been testing clean, wasn’t showered yet, didn’t have anything packed yet and was already feeling nausous and sick before she came over), as soon as I met her in the hospital she just had this very unloving and rude tone with me, lied to the court about something that I never said, and she is thinking that I have like HUGE mental issues just because I was an addict. I don’t know. Something about her just seems so off to me. Well anyway, I haven’t done drugs since and am healing from all of that pain that I put myself through taking stupid drugs. (I was trying to escape reality because I thought my life was that bad at the time). I know I have some trauma, but nothing that my spiritual practices can’t help me with. Also, that addictive mindset has changed. I feel different. I feel.. like my spirit is coming back after a long time of soul loss. Since spiritually awakening in 2017, I only relapsed once. But I have thankfully made it out again and I couldn’t feel more better about it. I never want to fall back into that hole again. Its absolutely terrible. A nightmare. I do know I have anxiety issues, but.. I just do not feel comfortable taking antidepressants if they are just going to stop me from doing anything spiritual or get me farther away from reprogramming my subconscious mind. I have taken Prozac and Celexa long time ago and they made everything so much worse!! :-\
I am trying to figure out what to do. Can anyone help me with some advice??
I could have made this while thing a lot more in depth and in more detail, but I think you guys get the point right? 😛
Namaste and God bless all of you beautiful beings. God loves you!! 🙂
Of course they mix and support each other. When I had a major depression, I took meds, joined a meditiation group, saw a wonderful therapist individually and after a little while, added a Spriritual Counselor to the mix. I continued all of those modalities for many years as I healed. And even as I’m much better now, I stilll phase those in and out gratefully.
And I certainly talk about Spirituality with those of my Career Counseling cllients who are open to it.
Ruth, I love your current series on Spirituality. I find it more spiritual than anything else on the web.
As a pastoral counselor, I have been able to actively utilize people’s spiritual lives in their therapeutic process for the 28 years of my practice. I find it indispensable in sorting out motivations and garnering positive energy for dealing with therapeutic issues. However, I have also witnessed the immense contribution that medications play in regulating physical and psychological energy.
I have found that medication is a good option for short term use. My long term clients (who had been on medications for more than a year) at an integrated center either began to be symptomatic with side effects or were on additional medications to stem the side effects. Generally when working with the elderly if I looked at the known side effects of the medications they were on I could find the complaint(s) they came in with to see me. All I could do was teach them a more spiritual perspective about their bodies and hope that gave them the courage to eliminate the med. But since psychopharmaceuticals tend to numb people they can be challenging to give up. I would hope that anyone who prescribes them also works with their clients so the prescribing doctor knows where their client is with regard to the med and all the side effects. The trick is to ask what their physical symptoms are because if you simply ask “Any problems?” they are very likely to say “no.”
I did a year Fellowship investigating the role of spirituality in women with breast and gynecological cancers, titled “Restoring the Soul in the Midst of Cancer.” Twenty five women participated in two groups (am & pm) for 6 weeks. The most powerful week was on forgiveness. At end one of the repeated comments was “this was best thing in all of my care.”
Ruth, this is a tremendous series! We must never be complacent in our own points of view.
More specifically,t his series is adding depth and breadth to our awareness that spirituality- a deep belief in the meaningfulness of life and a person’s life experience- is extremely important to human well-being.
It remains a very important subject, in all of its intricacies, for both field and laboratory research, as well as for study on every level.
Medication for mental health conditions, especially extreme and/or Crisis Phase, needs to be kept on the table, as a documented source of efficacious treatment.
Although there are some who write and speak of the “evils” or, just plain uselessness of medication, for every physical or mental health condition; we need not all jump on that bandwagon.
The wise understanding of each mode of treatment will always be to our advantage- thank you, thank you NiCABM for this fascinating and instructive series!!
Yes, spirituality does enhance health. Period. That has been shown in numerous studies: see “Soul Medicine” by Dawson Church, PhD and Norm Shealy, MD. But, the positive effects are not necessarily tied to potentiating medication. Spirituality can effect improvement in mood disorders without medication. The book “Resources for Extraordinary Healing: Schizophrenia, Bipolar and Other Serious Mental Illnesses” demonstrates how spirituality has had a positive effect on serious mental illness, as well–with only cautious use of medication.
If you are going to promote the effectiveness of spirituality and medication together–I think it is only fair to show also the effect of spirituality with little to no use of medication. By working with spirituality you are working with a very powerful promoter of health. This has been proven by numerous studies: see Harold Koenig’s newest “Handbook of Religion and Health” for more information.
I don’t get it.
Since the psychological Stone Age there has been hard evidence of the efficacy of a deeply held belief and it’s effect on ones physiology, and even, “spooky action at a distance” aka, PK. So it obviously goes beyond what is often classified as placebo. Why then is stuff like this being presented as being rather new, even edgy information? It’s over 200 years old !
“Spirituality” is obviously a sub-set of belief. I find that institutions “researching” (re-re-researching?) belief under any other disguise to be not only timid and quaint, but redundant and close to boring.
John Whitney
It does not surprise me that patients that reported a belief in a Higher Power and/or had a connection to spirituality experienced results with lifting depression symptoms. In my view, that may be the critical intervention for depression as antidepressants do not have a very good track record in research and often are no better than a placebo. I believe that depression will never be relieved solely on the use of an antidepressant. They are predicated on the assumption that brain chemistry is the source of the issue with depression and do not take into account that depression (and other mental health diagnoses) are a mulitfactoral health problem rooted in the many variables of a human being’s life.
When I refer patients to other medical professionals I find that those who carry a sense of being ethical – whether this stems from a religious or secular basis – tend to hold their patients in higher regard, give them more time and create a caring, relaxed and positive atmosphere – appear to have greater treatments outcomes. Whether this is because they are also more competent or that they support and nuture their patients into greater self efficacy I do not know. I like to think that the outcome is due to all these things. Certainly these qualities will improve placebo – and nuturing environment has to be an absolute basis for any form of healing.
People with Diabetes who believe in a higher power seem much more accepting of their disease and do better sticking to their regimen. I don’t have a formal study but after being in practice for 31 years believe spirituality helps people with all chronic diseases recover faster, and create more success with their lives overall.