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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Religiousness/spirituality and mental health among older male inmates | | Author(s) | Rebecca S Allen, Laura Lee Phillips, Lucinda Lee Roff |
| Journal title | The Gerontologist, vol 48, no 5, October 2008 |
| Pages | pp 692-697 |
| Source | http://www.geron.org |
| Keywords | Prisoners ; Religion ; Spiritual characteristics [elderly] ; Mental health [elderly] ; Correlation ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | With the rapid growth in the older prison population, emerging issues regarding physical and mental health require greater research and clinical attention. The authors examined the relation of religiousness and spirituality; demographic characteristics such as age, race, and type of crime; and physical and mental health among 73 older male inmates in the state of Alabama, US. Inmates older than age 50 who passed a cognitive screening completed face-to-face interviews lasting between 30 and 60 minutes. Due to the low literacy rates of the participants, the researchers administered all measures orally with response cards to facilitate understanding. Results showed that nearly 70% of the inmates were incarcerated for murder or sexual crimes. There were no racial/ethnic differences in reported religiousness or spirituality, demographic characteristics, or mental health. An association was found between self-reported years of incarceration and experienced forgiveness. Three regression models examined whether inmates' self-reported religiousness/spirituality influenced anxiety, depression, and desire for hastened death. The authors found that having a greater number of daily spiritual experiences and not feeling abandoned by God were associated with better emotional health. Future studies, perhaps using longitudinal or case-control methodology, should examine whether increased daily spiritual experiences and decreased feelings of abandonment by God foster better mental health among older inmates. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-091215205 A |
| Classmark | TGF: TR: EX: D: 49: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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