This project is designed to bring together two recently funded efforts exploring the American Indian experience with alcohol to better understand the place of spirituality and religious practices in the treatment and prevention of alcohol problems in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Drawing on a just completed epidemiological survey of over 3000 American Indian people from two distinct tribes and supplementing a just-begun study of the process of remission from alcohol dependence in one of these same tribes, our goal is to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods to provide a more comprehensive approach to American Indian and Alaska Native spirituality and religion than has heretofore been possible. We have five specific aims: 1) to better understand spirituality and religious practices in a random, community-based sample of members of two tribes in the U.S.; 2) to explore potential relationships between spirituality/religiousness and concurrent patterns of alcohol use and misuse in these same two tribes; 3) to articulate the role of spirituality and religion in changes in drinking behavior; 4) to extend the emphasis on spirituality and religion in the Healing of the Spirit Project to more explicitly examine their role in the treatment and prevention of alcohol problems; and, finally, 5) to apply the results of this work, in consultation with AI/AN community members, to inform future work on religiousness and spirituality with AI/AN people.
| Spicer, Paul; Bezdek, Marjorie; Manson, Spero M et al. (2007) A program of research on spirituality and American Indian alcohol use. South Med J 100:430-2 |
| Beals, Janette; Novins, Douglas K; Spicer, Paul et al. (2006) Help seeking for substance use problems in two American Indian reservation populations. Psychiatr Serv 57:512-20 |
| Bezdek, Marjorie; Croy, Calvin; Spicer, Paul et al. (2004) Documenting natural recovery in American-Indian drinking behavior: a coding scheme. J Stud Alcohol 65:428-33 |
| Novins, Douglas K; Beals, Janette; Moore, Laurie A et al. (2004) Use of biomedical services and traditional healing options among American Indians: sociodemographic correlates, spirituality, and ethnic identity. Med Care 42:670-9 |
