Association between religious life and health: a brief review of quantitative studies

Desde os prim??rdios da forma????o da sociedade humana, o trabalho em sa??de voltado para a cura e a preven????o das doen??as tem se organizado estreitamente ligado ??s pr??ticas religiosas. Com o advento da modernidade e o surgimento da medicina cient??fica buscou-se orientar e explicar o processo de adoecimento e cura de forma desvinculada da religi??o. No entanto, a partir do final do s??culo XX, o tema da correla????o entre vida religiosa e espiritualidade com os n??veis de sa??de da popula????o passou a merecer amplo interesse de pesquisadores de v??rias institui????es acad??micas. Com o aparecimento, principalmente nos Estados Unidos, de v??rios estudos m??dicos quantitativos que pesquisaram a associa????o entre vida religiosa e as condi????es de sa??de e recupera????o de doen??as, este tema passou a merecer o reconhecimento de setores acad??micos importantes das ci??ncias da sa??de. Estes estudos quantitativos, realizados a partir de m??todos epidemiol??gicos, foram importantes para dar legitimidade aos estudos qualitativos que tamb??m se expandiram. Este estudo busca fazer uma revis??o destes estudos na literatura internacional.Since the start of the formation of human society, health work turned to cure and prevention of diseases has been tightly organized as being linked to religious practices. With the advent of modernity and appearance of scientific medicine, it has been sought to guide and explain the process of sickness and cure in a manner not linked to religion. However, from the end of the XX century, the theme of correlation between religious life and spirituality with the population health levels started to deserve a broad interest from researchers from several academic institutions. With the appearance, mainly in the United States, of several quantitative medical studies that have researched the association between religious life and health conditions and recovery from diseases, this theme started to deserve recognition from important academic fields on health sciences. These quantitative studies, performed from epidemiological methods, have been important to legitimate the qualitative studies that have also been expanded. This study seeks to make a review of these studies on the international literature