Elderly patients who experience a religious crisis while ill are at increased risk of dying, according to the results of a study published in the August 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Almost 600 hospital patients, 55 years or older and predominantly from Protestant denominations, were tracked by researchers from Bowling Green State University and Duke University Medical Center. Patients who reported they felt alienated from God or who attributed their illness to the devil were associated with a 19 to 28 percent increase in the risk of dying during the two-year period of the study.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, one of the authors of the study and an associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center, says that feelings of “being abandoned or punished by God,” “believing the devil caused their illnesses” or “feeling abandoned by one’s faith community” were identified as key factors in risk of death among elderly participants.

Science has only recently begun to study the impact of faith on an individual’s well-being. Research conducted in the late 1990s at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., indicates that people with strong religious faith are less likely to die after open-heart surgery, more likely to recover from depression, have lower blood pressure and stronger immune systems. The Duke University research is the first to study how religious doubt affects patients.