Religiosity and its contribution to the prediction of psychological distress in the older population

Abstract

Despite of the existence of reliable data of a tendency toward increased religiosity in later life, the contribution of religion to mental health in the older population has received little empirical study. Several studies have examined the relationship between religiosity and psychological well-being among older people, nevertheless the findings are far from consistent. Lack of agreement among previous studies may be partly attributed to a failure to understand the multi-dimentional concept of religiosity and ignorance of the influence of the correlates of psychological well-being in the association between religiosity and psychological well-being. In response to the continuing ambiguity of the findings on the subject, the present study is aimed to investigate the contribution of indicators of religiosity to the prediction of anxiety and depression among older people, while taking into account variables which have been identified by the available literature as possible determinants of psychological well-being in the older population. Four hundred and twenty three subjects aged between 55 to 91 years were included in the study. Discriminant function analyses were employed for multivariate examinations of the weighted influence of predictor variables (ie. a combination of indicators of religiosity and socio-demographic variables) on anxiety and depression among older people. Religiosity was measured by questions relating to private prayer, church attendance, church activity, intrinsic religiosity and spiritual well-being. Analyses were undertaken separately for both men and women, and for groups of different religious denominations. Health emerged as the most important contributor to the distinction between older people who had tendencies to be clinically anxious or depressed and those who were found not to be clinically anxious or depressed, irrespective of gender and religious denominational groups. The contributions of indicators of religiosity to the prediction of anxiety and depression were less consistent than health, and emerged in complex interactions with socio-demographic variables. The relative contributions of the discriminating variables varied with both gender and religious denomination groups. Moreover, the findings suggest that religion can be either positively or negatively associated with anxiety and depression depending upon the aspects of religion considered. The implications these findings have for theoretical rationales, clinical practice and for future research are discussed. Show more