Religion and the experience of psychic suffering: listening to the family

Abstract

Religiosity has had an important role in the men’s life when facing adversities. To know how relatives of bearers of psychic suffering understand and live their religiosity was the objective of this study which consisted of a case study of qualitative nature. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview and its analysis allowed inferring that religion assumes an important role of social support, leading to an understanding of the psychic suffering once the therapeutic relationship imposed by the medicine does not allow the explanation of the situation presented by the patient. Religion gives to the relative, through the exercise of faith, the gratuitousness of the cure.