[The relationship between forgivingness, mental health and psychotherapy].

Forgivingness occupies a prominent place in religions as well as in various philosophical systems of ethics and can be defined as the free, personal distancing from feelings of rage and resentment toward a person or persons having committed an injustice. The main psychological function of forgiveness consists in allowing for the replacement of negative emotions by positive ones, such as generosity, goodness, compassion, empathy, or even love toward the offender. It must be emphasized that forgiveness is independent from reconciliation, and it is not simply a form of tolerance, justification, oblivion, underestimation, denial or amnesty. Intrapsychic processes are sufficient and necessary for the genesis of forgiveness, although it is likely that these are also influenced by complex interpersonal events. Current research identifies various dimensions of forgiveness, which must be distinguished from each other, as they differ both on the level of causes, as well as on that of effects. The observation that forgiveness has a positive effect on mental health is not new, it is, however, only recently that comprehensive theories have been constructed and scientific research has been developed regarding the relationship between forgiveness and psychopathology. Over the recent years, there has been an increasing number of studies affirming the beneficial effects of forgiveness on a broad spectrum of aspects of mental health and well-being, despite the lack of complete clarification of underlying mechanisms. The positive connection between forgiveness and mental health could be mediated through direct or indirect mechanisms interacting not only on a biological level, but also in the psychological and social realm of human existence. One direct way could be the avoidance of ruminative thoughts reinforcing and maintaining negative emotions such as resentment, hatred, anger, anxiety and fear. Moreover, forgiveness cultivates empathy and promotes altruistic forms of behavior, facilitating the preservation of relationships and protecting from prolonged distress. An indirect mechanism could involve various forms of health behavior, interpersonal functionality and social supportive networks, factors universally accepted as contributing to mental health. Owing to the positive influence of forgiveness on health issues, various modes of intervention have been proposed and implemented using forgiveness either independently or from within the conceptual framework of specific psychotherapeutic methods. The aim of these interventions is to express negative emotions, to liberate the subject from the vicious circle of rumination, and to overcome resentment in a positive way. Thus, there is an obvious need to further promote forgivingness as a subject of psychological and psychiatric research, and to foreground findings and possible clinical psychotherapeutic applications.

Religiosity dimensions and subjective health status in Greek students.

The quest for existential meaning constitutes a universal phenomenon traditionally manifested in official religions (religiosity) or personal modes of transcendence (spirituality). Religiosity and spirituality have been found to be associated with a variety of mental health and illness parameters. In the last decades there is an increasing number of publications with interesting results on the relationship between religiosity and mental health, both on a theoretical and a clinical level. Recent research suggests the presence of clinically important interactions between religious beliefs and mental health, although the exact nature of the associations remains unclear. The aim of the present study is to investigate subjective health status in relation to specific dimensions of religiosity and spirituality in Greek students; 202 students of the faculty of Theology of the University of Athens were interviewed using the Brief Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS), which assesses the dimensions of "daily spiritual experiences", "meaning", "values/beliefs", "forgiveness", "private religious practices", "religious/spiritual coping", "religious support", "religious/ spiritual history", "commitment", "organizational religiousness", and "religious preferences". Subjective health status was measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) which examines four areas of health in the following sub-scales: (a) somatic symptoms, (b) anxiety and insomnia, (c) social dysfunction and (d) severe depression. Pearson correlations coefficients and linear regression analyses were used to estimate the associations of GHQ-28 subscales with religiosity dimensions. High scores in each dimension of BMMRS corresponded to a low level of religiosity. The dimension of "daily spiritual experiences" was positively correlated with the subscales of anxiety/ insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression, while the dimension of "values/beliefs" with social dysfunction and severe depression and the dimension of "forgiveness" with all GHQ-28 subscales. The "organizational religiousness" dimension was positively correlated with anxiety/ insomnia, while overall self-ranking with social dysfunction and severe depression. Additionally, the dimension of "meaning" had a negative correlation with somatic symptoms. Moreover, in the multiple linear regression analyses, "meaning" was independently negative associated with somatic symptoms (p=0.032), whilst "daily spiritual experiences" were positively associated with anxiety/insomnia (p=0.023). Also, "values/beliefs and the overall self-ranking were positively associated with social dysfunction (p=0.026), (p=0.01) and "daily spiritual experiences", "values/beliefs", "forgiveness", as well as the overall self-ranking with severe depression (p=0.03), (p=0.01), (p=0.017), (p=0.009). Certain religiosity dimensions ("daily spiritual experiences", "values/beliefs", "forgiveness" and "organizational religiousness") were correlated with lower morbidity, in accordance to previous reports in different populations, whereas "meaning" was correlated with more somatic symptoms.