Religious coping of people in psychotherapy: A preliminary study

• Autor(a) principal: Brito, Hérica Landi de
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Seidl, Eliane Maria Fleury, Costa-Neto, Sebastião Benício
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Contextos Clínicos
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/contextosclinicos/article/view/ctc.2016.92.06

Studies have shown that religious beliefs and practices are mediators of the health and disease conditions as they enable the development of personal coping resources. The process by which people, through their religion, try to deal with important personal or situational requirements in their lives is called religious coping. However, there is no consensus on how such studies can be applied in professional practice during the clinical and psychological care. This study aimed to identify and understand the role played by the religious coping of people in cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, and to investigate how they were addressed during the psychological care. The specific objectives were: (i) to describe and analyze the existing stressors of people in psychotherapy and strategies of coping (religious and nonreligious) used by them to deal with the stressful situations; (ii) to identify the participants’ perception of the effectiveness of their religious coping strategies and appreciation of these strategies by the professional during the psychotherapeutic process. For such, eight people were interviewed, based on a semi-structured script, in cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, for which the concept of coping has theoretical consonance. The interviews were recorded in audio, transcribed and submitted to content analysis. Results indicated that participants used a variety of religious coping strategies to manage stressful situations, although these don’t seem to have been valued by psychotherapists. It is concluded that it is important to consider religious coping in clinical practice both as a resource for emotional regulation and direct resolution of problems.Keywords: coping, religious coping, psychotherapy.