Spiritual and Religious Healing Practices: Some Reflections from Saudi National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Riyadh

AbstractTraditional practices constituting spiritual and religious (S/R) healing are an important component of the holistic healthcare model and are used in health, well-being, and treating a variety of diseases around the world. The main focus of this review is to summarize the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) studies that especially target S/R healing practices in Saudi Arabia (SA) and discuss the results in light of relevant international literature. From year 2013 –2017, electronic searches of PubMed, OvidSP, Google Scholar, and two publishing housing Web sites (Sciencedomain.com and Dove Medical Press.com) were made using key words and Boolean operators and retrieved thousands of published papers from peer-reviewed journals. Two independent reviewers decid ed to include a total of 108 articles: 48 from SA and 60 from other international literature. The sociodemographic variables of the participants varied in local studies and were comparable with international data. The frequency and types of religious and spiritual practices reported in local and int ernational zones varied in accordance with religious belief, gender, age, education, and prevalent chronic diseases. Most of professionals and practitioners showed fairly good knowledge and positive attitude toward spiritual and religious practices used in diverse clinical and non-clinical situation s across the world. Furthermore, it was observed that in the international scenario, S/R researches using specif...
Source: Journal of Religion and Health - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research