Parkinson's Disease, Religion, and Spirituality

Abstract

BACKGROUND: There has been increasing interest in recent decades in the interactions between disease, religious faith, and spirituality. An issue specific to neurological disorders is to what extent religiousness and spirituality depend upon the integrity of neuronal pathways. METHODS: We review recent research that investigates the effects of Parkinson's disease (PD) on religious faith and spirituality. Few studies have addressed this issue, but these few illustrate contrasting methodological approaches that yield different conclusions. FINDINGS: On the one hand, case-control studies have reported an apparent decrease in both religious practice and beliefs in PD with some influence of laterality of disease onset. In contrast, qualitative studies investigating religious and general coping in PD emphasize that religious faith remains important to patients. CONCLUSIONS: Methodological pitfalls are found in both approaches. We conclude that there is little evidence to support claims of reduced spirituality and religious faith in PD. We recommend approaches to future studies that could enable a more nuanced understanding of spiritual and religious changes that might occur in PD.

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