Handbook of Religion and Health
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| Author | Harold G. Koenig, Michael E. McCullough & David B. Larson |
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| Language | English |
| Publisher | Oxford Univ. Press |
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Publication date
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2001 |
| Pages | 712 |
| ISBN | |
Handbook of Religion and Health is a scholarly book about the relation of spirituality and religion with physical and mental health. Written by Harold G. Koenig, Michael E. McCullough, and David B. Larson, the book was published in the United States in 2001. The book has been discussed in magazines and reviewed in professional journals.
A second revised edition of the Handbook was published in 2012.
The first edition of the Handbook of Religion and Health (published in 2001) is divided into 8 major parts that contain a total of 34 chapters. The book also contains an 11-page introduction, a 2-page conclusion, 95 pages of references, and a 24-page index. One reviewer described the book as "surprisingly readable" (p. 791).
The parts and chapters are shown in the adjacent table. Most chapters focus on reviewing and discussing the relation between religion and particular health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease or depression. In two chapters, the authors present more encompassing theoretical models that they suggest may explain the generally favorable associations observed between religion and health:
The authors note that their model for effects on physical health
does not consider 'supernatural'... explanations... since such mechanisms (if they exist at all) act outside the laws of science as we know them today. We focus here on known psychological, social, behavioral, and physiological mechanisms by which religion may exert effects on physical health. (p. 389)
The book's 34th and final chapter contains a 77-page table with systematic information about all 20th-century studies of religion and health. Topics are arranged in the order of the other chapters, and provide technical information such as the type of population, the number of subjects, the existence of a control or a comparison group, and a 1-to-10 rating or "grade" of the study's quality and rigor. The "reader thus gains a snapshot view of each study, can easily identify those with a variable of interest, and can reference back to the text to see what the authors have to say about it" (p. 139).
Reviews and discussions have appeared in The New Yorker,Freethought Today,First Things,Journal of the American Medical Association,The Gerontologist, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health,Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion,Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing,Journal of Sex Education & Therapy,Anglican Theological Review, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and elsewhere.
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