Religion doesn't seem to protect against depression.

[Kitsune]

I have heard it claimed that religion protects from mental illness, especially depression.
This study seems to directly contradict that. It has a large number of participants.

http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/201 ... ainst.html

Religion doesn't seem to protect against depression.
By Tomas Rees on Sunday, May 05, 2013
In most countries, religious people tend to be happier and less depressed, and it's often suggested that religion somehow provides a happiness boost and protects against depression.

Maybe, so the thought process goes, religious belief alone is enough to perk people up, but even if it doesn't then participating in religious gatherings, and the social support that goes with it - well surely that's got to help.

It's an attractive idea, but the problem is that it's really difficult to unpick cause and effect. Maybe it's simply that depressed people stop being religious. That's certainly what a study that came out last year suggested.

About the only way to tease this out is to follow people over time, and see who gets depressed and who doesn't. That's what Michael King (University College London) and colleagues have done in a recent international study.

They interviewed 8318 patients without depression attending doctor's surgeries in the Chile, Estonia, The Netherlands, Portugal, UK, Spain, and Slovenia. Then they interviewed them again 6 and 12 months later (well, most of them - some, especially the younger and less educated, didn't turn up to later interviews).

They found that significantly more of the participants who actively practised religion (10.3%) or had a spiritual world view (10.5%) experienced an episode of major depression over those 12 months compared with those who had a secular outlook (7%).

Once they'd adjusted for differences in the characteristics of the people in the depressed and non-depressed groups (age, sex, education, employment, social support, past history of depression and country), only 'spiritual world view' (and not active religious participation) remained a significant predictor of future depression. And the country where this effect was strongest was the UK.

Among those who said they were spiritual or religious at baseline, there was a clear relationship between the strength of belief and the risk of depression. That's shown in the figure - while the risk of depression for those who were only weakly religious was similar to the non-believers (at 7.4%), for the strong believers the risk rose to 12.5%.

They concluded that:

Although our main finding of an association between religious life understanding and onset of depression varied by country, we found no evidence that spirituality may protect people, and only weak evidence that a religious life view was possibly protective in two countries (Slovenia and The Netherlands). Finally, there was no moderating effect of religious and spiritual understanding of life on the impact of life events on onset of major depression.


So religion doesn't seem to protect people from depression, and spirituality in the absence of religious affiliation seems to be a positive risk factor - especially in the UK.

That chimes with other studies (including a recent one by King himself [see references below], and one showing that New Agers are particularly prone to delusional beliefs). What does that mean?

Probably only that people who are prone to psychological problems tend to drop out of organised religion...

ResearchBlogging.org
Leurent, B., Nazareth, I., Bellón-Saameño, J., Geerlings, M., Maaroos, H., Saldivia, S., Švab, I., Torres-González, F., Xavier, M., & King, M. (2013). Spiritual and religious beliefs as risk factors for the onset of major depression: an international cohort study Psychological Medicine, 1-12 DOI: 10.1017/S0033291712003066

King, M., Marston, L., McManus, S., Brugha, T., Meltzer, H., & Bebbington, P. (2012). Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households The British Journal of Psychiatry, 202 (1), 68-73 DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.112.112003

Creative Commons License This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

[hongi]

Maybe it's simply that depressed people stop being religious. That's certainly what a study that came out last year suggested.

Does it work the other way?

I don't think you ever 'cure' depression, so I'm still depressed of course. I've become religious and I'm happier and coping with my depression better than when I was an atheist.

[Zeropoint]

I've felt more happiness and more peace since I made the decision to reject the faith I was raised in, in favor of atheism. I obviously can't speak for everyone, but my religion came with a side of guilt and cognitive dissonance that I'm happy to be rid of.

[Covenant]

Religion among people of marginal faith is a funny thing. When something bad happens (something that makes them depressed in a way a generalized tendency towards depression does not) they can end up abandoning religion. Religion is not just a set of beliefs afterall, it's a routine and it often includes leaving the house, looking fancy in some way (either your best clothes or ritual ones), and then behaving in a social construct about something that doesn't actually have an individual impact in a literal manner.

The emotional high that services provide some people would be dampened by the depression, as would the effect of being out with people, getting dressed, etc. The idea of ceremony and such would sound agonizing. They might not have the energy, they might start thinking "maybe next week" or whatever. So it slides and then if they have to they reject it because clearly nothing is stepping in to make them feel better and they don't feel that presence anymore, so it must be bullshit.

This is not a good foundation to make a major ideological change from, and one of the reasons an atheist like me will provide sympathy but not overly encourage someone who is lapsed, angry, or depressed as a reason for their lack of faith. I know most of us wouldn't, but I don't think anything good comes from depression. Maybe good art. But good art isn't always good for the artist.

Does it work the other way?

I don't think you ever 'cure' depression, so I'm still depressed of course. I've become religious and I'm happier and coping with my depression better than when I was an atheist.

It can work the other way. Making changes can help depression, so if you're a non-believer and then you convert as a way to give your life some structure and meaning, that may provide an effective safety net (not to mention structure and socialization opportunities) against the repetitive "never going to get better" feeling of depression. Just because religion is no defense against depression, nor a cure for it, doesn't mean for you that it wasn't a helpful way of getting out of your rut.

I'm not religious but I'm not an idiot, I know that it works for some people.

I'm sure if you look at what religion provides for you, and the things you would shudder to give up again, you'll see an interesting smoothie of behaviors that helped you. Even if religion is itself a bunch of hogwash it is sometimes the kind of hogwash people need, in just the right proportions. I'd love if weekly attendances to churches were exchanged for something else, but until then, I don't know. I'll never advocate it, but it's a bitter pill I do know works for some.

[General Zod]

The only thing that I've found that's helped me deal with depression in the past was identifying contributing behaviors and changing them. Chances are, I'd wager that if people found some sort of relief in religion, then they managed to get lucky and change whatever behaviors were contributing to their depression even if they weren't aware of what that behavior was.

[hongi]

It can work the other way. Making changes can help depression, so if you're a non-believer and then you convert as a way to give your life some structure and meaning, that may provide an effective safety net (not to mention structure and socialization opportunities) against the repetitive "never going to get better" feeling of depression. Just because religion is no defense against depression, nor a cure for it, doesn't mean for you that it wasn't a helpful way of getting out of your rut.

I'm not religious but I'm not an idiot, I know that it works for some people.

I'm sure if you look at what religion provides for you, and the things you would shudder to give up again, you'll see an interesting smoothie of behaviors that helped you. Even if religion is itself a bunch of hogwash it is sometimes the kind of hogwash people need, in just the right proportions. I'd love if weekly attendances to churches were exchanged for something else, but until then, I don't know. I'll never advocate it, but it's a bitter pill I do know works for some.

Breaking the routine has helped me, you're right on the money there. But funnily enough, it wasn't going to church. I hadn't gone to church since I was a kid, when I realised I didn't believe in what they were telling me and even now, I don't go to church regularly (I'm starting to get into it though). It was more like finding new friends, leaving the prison that I'd made for myself in my home, getting into outdoor activities, stop watching porn, finding a job, helping people in order to take my mind off my own crippling depression, getting off the goddamn computer, etc. Anything that a depressed person who happened to be atheist could do as well.

I suspect that if you looked, depressed religious people and depressed atheists would be very alike in what causes and amps up their depression, how it manifests itself, and how they manage it.