Religion and/ Spirituality Essay

The findings of the study highlights the salience of religious beliefs and spirituality as an aspect that positively influenced or contributed towards the subjective sense of well-being of the institutionalized aged, from the point of view of their administrators. For many of the participants, religiosity and spirituality seemed to be identical and they did not differentiate one from the other. And they engaged assiduously in religious practices, which in turn contributed toward their subjective experience of well-being. This practice of religion or their spirituality has been found to be the most powerful coping strategy adopted by these institutionalized elderly under investigation. This finding showed consistency across all sources of data in this study. The elderly at Gladys Center found prayer or dependence on God by the willing surrender to His will as a powerful means of dealing with his or her difficulties in all levels, as expressed by their administrators. This finding is backed by Mackenzie et al.(2000): Religion and spirituality significantly influence both mental and physical health in later life and relationship with God forms the foundation of their psychological well-being. While intrinsic religious orientation is inversely related to depression, anxiety, fear of death in older adults and they better cope with illness, loss, and grief formal religious involvement is related to general measures of personal adjustment and subjective health and life satisfaction (Koenig, 1999 & Mackenzie et al. 2000). According to Magai et al.(2003) Religious beliefs and participation or engaging in religious activities are closely related to positive aging outcomes, particularly life satisfaction and the absence of mental disorders. Most of the elderly as it was observed across different sources of data, engaged in religious and devotional activities every day of the week. Studies examining the relationship between religious involvement and a wide variety of health conditions, that as individuals aged, both formal and informal religious participation were associated with better health, happiness, and life satisfaction. Even when health was controlled, the strong link between religiosity and subjective well-being remained, which is true in the case of the participants who showed a great sense of well-being despite their declining physical health. Study done by Magai et al. (2003) proved that absence of religiosity or spirituality is consistently a predictor of low hardiness and those who are religiously oriented are likely to be intrinsically hardy and less likely to be debilitated, despite variations in social network. This observation could be an indicator how the elderly cope with the absence of their dear ones and various other things. The findings of the study showed that as perceived by their administrators, the elderly experienced prayer as source of strength, hope, meaning and peace in their lives and different studies hold up this finding. Religious experience provides a sense of meaning and purpose in daily life (Polner, 1989), a primary source for inner peace, values and social harmony (Witmer & Sweeny, 1992), a greater sense of wholeness, connectedness, and positive outlook.