RT Article
T1 Health Help-Seeking Behaviour in Spiritual Healing Practice: Records from the Panacea Society’s Healing Department, 1924–1997
JF Journal of religion and health
VO 61
IS 3
SP 2417
OP 2432
A1 Williams, Ryan J.
A1 Watts, Fraser N. 1946-
A1 Lockhart, Alastair
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V.
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1805373129
AB Why people seek help is a question shared by both health psychologists and scholars of spiritual healing. This overlap, however, has gone unexplored. This article shows convergence between health help-seeking behaviours in spiritual healing and secular professional health services. It does so by drawing on the archival records from the Panacea Society in Bedford, England, which began an international healing ministry by post-amassing over 120,000 correspondents from 93 different countries. Archives from the Panacea Society’s Healing Department containing records of the self-reported effects of the prescribed water-taking healing ritual were used to investigate variables related to help-seeking for health problems through spiritual healing. A sample of over 10% of the available records (n = 7192) contained data from 40,627 letters written over a 73-year period from 48 different countries. In line with research from health psychology, and specifically the Health Belief Model, findings showed that those who were older, female, and receiving perceived benefits from treatment were more likely to engage in help-seeking.
K1 gender differences
K1 Health Belief Model
K1 Help-seeking
K1 religious participation
K1 Ritual
K1 Spiritual/faith healing
DO 10.1007/s10943-020-01044-1