Highly Religious Patients Fight to Live Longer

http://www.christianpost.com/Education/Polls_reports/2009/03/highly-religious-patients-fight-to-live-longer-18/index.html

[The Christian Post] 18 Mar 2009--A new study on patients with advanced cancer found that those who used their religious faith to cope with their illness were far more likely to want doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive than were less religious patients.

Patients with a high level of "positive" religious coping – seeking God's love and care – were three times more likely than others to receive intensive life-prolonging treatment in their last week of life, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"People think that spiritual patients are more likely to say their lives are in God’s hands – 'Let what happens happen' – but in fact we know they want more aggressive care," said Holly G. Prigerson, the study’s senior author and director of the Center for Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, according to The New York Times.

"To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified, and there's a sense they feel it's their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible," she added to the NY Times.