ArticleFrontiers in public health2024
Belief in omens and superstitions among patients with chronic neurological disorders.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Superstitious conditioning shapes the illusory experience of free will under causal determinism.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Editorial: Epilepsy research in the developing countries: the neuro-ethical issues, cross-cultural differences, and relevance to comprehensive management.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Chronic neurological disorders may affect various cognitive processes, including religiosity or superstitious belief. We investigated whether superstitious beliefs are equally prevalent in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), people with epilepsy (PWE), patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and healthy controls (HCs). Methods: From late 2014 to early 2023 we conducted a cross-sectional in-person anonymous paper-based survey at the tertiary clinic of Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Klinikos among outpatients and HCs by asking them to ascribe meaning or report belief for 27 culturally adapted statements (9 omens and 18 superstitions). The sum of items that a respondent believes in was labeled the superstition index (SI). The SI was compared between groups by means of the Kruskal-Wallis (H) test and negative binomial regression modeling. A two-step cluster analysis was performed to discern different subgroups based on answers to the items of the SI. Results: There were 553 respondents who completed the questionnaire (183 PWE, 124 patients with PD, 133 with MS and 113 HCs). Complete SI scores were collected for 479 (86.6%) participants and they were lower in patients with PD ( Conclusion: Our study suggests that individuals with PD believe in less superstitions than patients with MS, PWE or HCs. The results of this investigation should be independently confirmed after adjusting for PD-specific variables.
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Registered trials
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