This third edition of a popular text introduces healthcare students and professionals to a wide range of health beliefs and practices in world religions. Chapters on various religions are written to offer an insider’s view on the religion’s historical development, key beliefs and practices, including ideas of health, sickness, death, and dying. The chapters include case studies, advice on what to do and what to avoid when caring for patients. Introductory chapters invite the reader to consider the broad context of patient care in pluralistic society and explore one’s personal orientation to others from different religions. How we care for patients from different backgrounds and cultures insists on professional boundaries that the reader may have not yet examined. A new chapter explores the relationship between religion and public health in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, asking the reader to consider what morally appropriate balance is required if and when personal faith conflict with public health needs. Undoubtedly, the sensitivity with which clinicians communicate with patients and make decisions regarding appropriate medical intervention can be greatly increased by an understanding of religious and cultural diversity. This is a core textbook for students studying healthcare, religion and culture, and an invaluable reference for healthcare professionals.

This third edition of a popular text introduces healthcare students and professionals to a wide range of health beliefs and practices in world religions. Chapters on various religions are written to offer an insider’s view on the religion’s historical development, key beliefs and practices, including ideas of health, sickness, death, and dying. The chapters include case studies, advice on what to do and what to avoid when caring for patients. Introductory chapters invite the reader to consider the broad context of patient care in pluralistic society and explore one’s personal orientation to others from different religions. How we care for patients from different backgrounds and cultures insists on professional boundaries that the reader may have not yet examined. A new chapter explores the relationship between religion and public health in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, asking the reader to consider what morally appropriate balance is required if and when personal faith conflict with public health needs. Undoubtedly, the sensitivity with which clinicians communicate with patients and make decisions regarding appropriate medical intervention can be greatly increased by an understanding of religious and cultural diversity. This is a core textbook for students studying healthcare, religion and culture, and an invaluable reference for healthcare professionals.

Learn to respond effectively and appropriately to spiritual needs in a health care setting Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness: An Introductory Guide for Health Care Professionals explores the principles of spiritual care as applied to clinical practice. This book focuses specifically on the significance of spirituality in clinical settings with practical suggestions on how to apply these principles in the healing process. With chapters that begin with clear objectives and end with guided questions, this valuable textbook provides a framework that will aid health care facilities in addressing spiritual needs in a clinical setting and help faculty in mentoring students in the field. This practical guide will help you learn when and how to address spiritual issues in health care with patients for whom illness creates a crisis of faith as well as those for whom it provides support. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness highlights not only the importance of health care professionals in providing emotional, mental, and spiritual care, but the necessity for them to address their own spirituality as well. The book includes the experiences and case studies of skilled authorities mostly from the Judeo-Christian or Judaic tradition who identify principles that they found to be important in working with patients from a wide diversity of spiritual traditions. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness provides you with detailed information on: Ministryhealinga model of wholeness and healing that incorporates an integrated view of humanity through the four domains: spiritual, emotional, physical, and social the physiological impacts of humor and hope on mood, the neuroendocrine hormones, and the immune system spiritual coping with traumaan overview of the research literature and how to address the spiritual coping needs and concerns of patients the role of faith in providing meaning to physical illness and the importance of the role of the health care professional in first understanding, and then assisting the patient in their struggle to find meaning the key components of spiritual care to increase the efficacy of spiritual caregivers the bereavement process with regard to religious, cultural, and gender variations, and the role of the healthcare professional in providing support This book shows you not only how to meet the spiritual needs of patients from a diversity of faith traditions, but how to overcome challenges to your own spirituality, such as difficult patients and patients whose cultural outlook is so different from your own it causes discomfort. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness will help all health care professionals who want to bring spirituality into their medical, dental, nursing, occupational therapy, or physical therapy practice.

What can we learn from the tragedy of these exploited young people?In Thailand, a thriving sex industry makes its money exploiting the young. Some children are coerced into prostitution and some have been sold into sexual slavery by their own families, but just as tragically there is no shortage of young girls (and boys) willing to work as prostitutes. Child Prostitution in Thailand: Listening to Rahab searches for the reasons why. This uniquely insightful book looks into the lives--and even more importantly, listens to the words--of ten Thai prostitutes. Child Prostitution in Thailand is about what we can learn from them--who they are, what they go through, and why.In their own words, the young prostitutes you'll meet in this book Thailand discuss what brought them into this life. Some have come from a tragic home situation, but not all are impoverished, orphaned, or abused. Nevertheless, they have entered into a dangerous and degrading lifestyle that often leads to violence, sickness, and early death. Of these ten prostitutes, one has already passed away and four more are dying with AIDS.This remarkable volume will help you to understand: how Thailand's child prostitution industry developed the impact upon girls and young women of Thailand's evolution from an agriculturally based economy to an industrial one changing forms of child prostitution who the customers are the role of tourism and its impact on child prostitution in Thailand how poverty, poor education, a sexually focused mass media, lack of religious emphasis, disability, and the lack of a clear policy on child prostitution help the sex industry to thriveThis book also explores the details of child prostitution in Thailand--for instance, in open-air "restaurants" and "pubs" in Chiang Mai, your young waitress may double as a sex worker--and her provocative "uniform" represents a dress code enforced by the establishment's owner. A "cafe" is another kind of sex service disguised as (and functioning as) a bar/restaurant. Here, young girls working ten- and eleven-hour shifts in short skirts must wear price tags pinned to their shirts and may have to service five to ten clients per night.The head of the U.S. State Department's office for international women's issues estimates that traffickers bring 50,000 women and children into the United States illegally each year. The lessons Listening to Rahab teaches can help us to better understand the situation here at home as well as overseas. A helpful appendix assessing incidents of child prostitution around the globe bring the information even more clearly into focus.

Learn to respond effectively and appropriately to spiritual needs in a health care setting Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness: An Introductory Guide for Health Care Professionals explores the principles of spiritual care as applied to clinical practice. This book focuses specifically on the significance of spirituality in clinical settings with practical suggestions on how to apply these principles in the healing process. With chapters that begin with clear objectives and end with guided questions, this valuable textbook provides a framework that will aid health care facilities in addressing spiritual needs in a clinical setting and help faculty in mentoring students in the field. This practical guide will help you learn when and how to address spiritual issues in health care with patients for whom illness creates a crisis of faith as well as those for whom it provides support. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness highlights not only the importance of health care professionals in providing emotional, mental, and spiritual care, but the necessity for them to address their own spirituality as well. The book includes the experiences and case studies of skilled authorities mostly from the Judeo-Christian or Judaic tradition who identify principles that they found to be important in working with patients from a wide diversity of spiritual traditions. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness provides you with detailed information on: Ministryhealinga model of wholeness and healing that incorporates an integrated view of humanity through the four domains: spiritual, emotional, physical, and social the physiological impacts of humor and hope on mood, the neuroendocrine hormones, and the immune system spiritual coping with traumaan overview of the research literature and how to address the spiritual coping needs and concerns of patients the role of faith in providing meaning to physical illness and the importance of the role of the health care professional in first understanding, and then assisting the patient in their struggle to find meaning the key components of spiritual care to increase the efficacy of spiritual caregivers the bereavement process with regard to religious, cultural, and gender variations, and the role of the healthcare professional in providing support This book shows you not only how to meet the spiritual needs of patients from a diversity of faith traditions, but how to overcome challenges to your own spirituality, such as difficult patients and patients whose cultural outlook is so different from your own it causes discomfort. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness will help all health care professionals who want to bring spirituality into their medical, dental, nursing, occupational therapy, or physical therapy practice.

Discover a pastoral approach to depression that combines Eastern wisdom and Western science!Wu Wei, Negativity, and Depression reveals a way to break the cycle of depression, not by denying it or fighting it, but by the ancient principle of wu wei, non-trying. The bleak cycle of depression starts when people experience negativity. They turn inward to try to find self-esteem, but the negativity strips all the power of self-affirmation from them. The gap between is and ought--how they see themselves and how they want to be--is too great to bridge. The cycle known as self-regulatory perseveration means that depressed persons are caught in a desperate, fruitless search for affirmation. Instead of self-esteem, they find self-criticism and further negative thoughts. Yet they keep looking . . . and looking . . . and looking. The more they look for self-worth inside, the less they find, and the harder they try--the cycle continues. When trying simply doesn't work, wu wei, the principle of letting go, may help break that cycle. When trying simply doesn't work, wu wei, not-trying, may help. Wu wei is the principle of letting go. By giving up on the self-imposed and unattainable oughts and shoulds, the depressed person stops focusing on self. Wu wei breaks the cycle of negativity, allowing the depressed person to begin to heal.Wu Wei, Negativity, and Depression offers a comprehensive discussion of depression, including: epidemiology of depression etiology and biological causes psychosocial theories standard treatments of the past and present pastoral care of depressed persons This important book constructs a possible approach to depressed souls weary of fighting and trying to fix themselves. WuWei, Negativity, and Depression can bring new hope to those who most need it.