Fé e espiritualidade no processo saúde - doença: uma revisão de literatura.

Abstract

Since the earliest times of humanity, faith has influenced religious, cultural, social and political movements. The exercise of faith causes a person to be able to believe with complete certainty in someone or something independent of the existence or not of evidence, which for science are crucial to proving a principle. Because of this, faith is an attitude opposed to doubt and sometimes to human logic, being intimately connected to a supernatural trust. In that, it influences how the subject can understand and care for health, using not only material resources, but also resources recognized as spiritual instruments for the Christian milieu. This work seeks to investigate the influence of faith in the health-disease process, based on religious practices of prayer and imposition of hands. Literature on the subject was searched in the period from 1997 to 2018, in the MEDLINE and SciELO databases, in Portuguese and English. The sample of this study was composed by 11 literatures. Literature analysis corroborated the effect of religious practices as therapeutic systems in the health-disease process. According to the sample, it is important to publish more on the subject, in order to bring the relationship between science and religion in terms of expanding forms and knowledge to care for and understand the human being. At the end of the study, it was possible to understand that religious practices such as prayer and the laying on of hands have a beneficial influence on the health of the individual and that it is necessary to have continuous studies about faith and spirituality, especially when they are involved in the health-disease process.