Cancer: pray online help cope with the disease

Prayer line in support groups is beneficial for mental health patients with breast cancer, shows for the first time a U.S. study published on the website of the journal "Psychooncology".
We know that many cancer patients pray in support groups on the Internet to better cope with the disease. This is the first study, to our knowledge, examined the psychological effects of this behavior, "says Bret Shaw, who led the study at the College of Engineering Madison.

The analysis focused on messages sent by 97 patients with breast cancer participating in a support group online integral part of the computer program "Living with breast cancer."

Surveys were conducted prior to the entry of patients in this group and four months later. The messages written by the participants were analyzed using a text analysis program, which measures the percentage of religious words (prayer, faith, holy, God ...).

It appears that the use of such words was associated with lower levels of negative emotions and a greater confidence in their abilities and well-being level.

"From a psychological point of view, several reasons why cancer patients can benefit from prayer, that it be done on the Internet or elsewhere," says lead author of the study. In most cases, how to use religion was to rely on God for what is the evolution of the disease, which had the effect of reducing the stress of patients and bring them to believe in the afterlife and therefore have less fear of death, he added.