Dinner Speech: Niels Christian Hvidt & Klaus Baumann, IRG: "The support of psychosocial and spiritual needs and resources in medicine - Representations of God
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In recent years we have seen an important increase in psychosocial and epidemiological research in religious coping. A vast mass of research literature has appeared in the field and we now have evidence for the long held assumption that healthy representations of God lead to positive health outcomes in terms of coping with disease, quality of life, and even longevity. There is similar evidence that unhealthy representations of God and the ensuing spiritual struggles have the opposite health outcomes. While there is rich data regarding the effects of different representations of God, there is only limited knowledge of spiritual and religious coping patterns in the most secular cultures such as Denmark. Thus, we will present the religious landscape of Northern Europe and give some insights from ongoing research on the spiritual coping patterns that seem typical for secular Europeans when they fall seriously ill and lose control of their lives.