A Refuge for Some: Gender Differences in the Relationship between Religious Involvement and Depression

Abstract

Gender differences exist in religious involvement and depression, with women reporting significantly higher levels of both. Working from the position that religzous involvement is beneficial to mental health, this paper testa whether higher religious involvement directly de.creases depression and whethe.r ir acts as a buffer against the harmful effects of persistent strains in role domains for women compared to men. Resulta, based on a sample of married and divorced men and women living in Indianalx~lis, suggest that religious involvement measures tend to have negative effects on depression for women. There was no demonstrable relationship between religious involvement and depression for men. Of the four measures of religious involvement used here, ordy the use of prayer to cope with daily stressors and strains significantly buffered the effects of chronic tole strains on depression, but only for women, lmplications for future understanding of gender differences in the relationship between religious involvement and mental health are discussed.A cursory review of the literature investigating the relationship between religious involvement and mental health yields a wide-ranging consensus among social scientists, gerontologists, and health care providers that religious involvement produces positive mental health outcomes, including reduced levels of depression (Koenig 1995; Ellison 1994; Levin 1994; Koenig 1997 for reviews of this literature). Occasionally, studies have emerged to suggest the opposite; that religious involvement also produces either a negative or no influence at all on mental health outcomes (Heintzelman and Fehr 1976; Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi 1975; Sorenson, Grindstaff, and Turner 1995; Francis et al. 1981; Wilson and Miller 1986). In general, however, most of the work in this field has moved from attempting to confirm which of the above is the "real" effect of

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