Religion And Health

Although medicine is practiced in a secular setting, religious and spiritual issues have an impact on patient perspectives regarding their health and the management of any disorders that may afflict them.

We are eating ourselves to death in many ways, both bodily and societally. Few activities are as essential to human flourishing as eating, and fewer still are as ethically intricate. Eating well is particularly confusing. Conflicting recommendations, contradictory scientific studies, and the confounding environmental and economic factors that surround us make choices difficult. Eating “just right” is complex for the contemporary American, living amid excess and faced with moral, medical, and environmental consequences that influence our eating choices. A different eating strategy is needed, one grounded in our biology but also philosophically sound, theologically cogent, and personally achievable.

Susan Sontag in "Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors" points to the vital connection between metaphors and bodily illnesses, and though her analyses deals mainly with modern literary works.

This book offers new possibilities for mental health professionals who are looking for ways to adapt traditional therapy and counseling techniques to address the spiritual and psychological issues their clients face. The author utilizes an Adlerian Individual Psychology perspective, which rejects biological determinism and focuses on the influence of powerful environmental factors on personality.