Religion and Health: From Holy Madness to Medicalized Meditation

3 units

This course provides an overview of religion-health relations, drawing upon the fields of religious studies, history, and medicine. Topics include the impact of religiosity on health and vice versa; how health/illness is understood in religious terms (e.g., holy madness, sacred diseases, possession); how religious practice is understood in a medical framework (e.g., the health aspects of yoga, meditation, prayer); and how the impact of religiousity on health is explained in the medical field through positive psychology and the placebo effect.