Approaches to religiosity related to anxiety among college students

Abstract

ABSTRAC T To date, the literature on religiosity and anxiety has yielded mixed results. Available results suggest that constellations of religious attitudes, commitment and denominational subcultures have diverse relationships with types of anxiety. A sample of college students from a predominantly conservative Christian area responded to the Prayer Functions Scale, the Religious Commitment Inventory, the Scriptural Literalism Scale, the Fowler Religious Attitudes Scale, the Anxiety Control Questionnaire and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. A principal components analysis suggests that a constellation of religious variables-which involves religious commitment; aspects of one's prayer life, and relating to others in the religious reference group-has a signi cant negative relationship with trait anxiety. Although further con rmatory studies are necessary, at this point available data suggest that a committed, related approach to religiosity may be associated with lower levels of general anxiety.

Clinical Judgment Faith Bias: The Impact of Faith and Multicultural Competence on Clinical Judgment

“…The results of the current study are consistent with the literature finding no relationship between religiousness and clinical judgments of mental health (Davis, Kerr, & Kurpius, 2003;Harris, Schoneman, & Carrera, 2002;Koenig, Ford, George, Blazer, & Meador, 1993;Koenig, George, Blazer, Pritchett, & Meador, 1993;Miller & Kelley, 2005;Oman & Thoresen, 2005;Pfeifer & Waelty, 1999), no relationship between religiousness and clinical judgments of anxiety (Koenig, 1998(Koenig, , 2005 . Sanderson, Vandenberg, and Paese (1999) found when 67 mental health professionals were asked to rate 18 case vignettes on their degree of mental health, clinicians did not make judgments based on the religious content of the vignettes.…”

“…Literature reviews on religion and mental health (e.g., Davis, Kerr, & Kurpius, 2003;Harris, Schoneman, & Carrera, 2002;Koenig, Ford, George, Blazer, & Meador, 1993;Koenig, George, Blazer, Pritchett, & Meador, 1993;Pfeifer & Waelty, 1999) have found a small positive correlation between anxiety and religion, suggesting people with anxiety disorders are more religious than other people, though there is little evidence to support the converse -religious people are not necessarily more susceptible to anxiety. Religious struggle has been shown to be associated with elevated mortality rates (Oman & Thoresen, 2005).…”

“…Several studies investigating the relationship between religiousness and OCD have found no relationship between religious beliefs and any clinical feature of OCD, including religious obsessions (Lewis, 1998;Tek & Ulug, 2001;Yaryura-Tobias, Grunes, Todaro, McKay, Neziroglu, & Stockman, 2000). Some reviews on religion and mental health (e.g., Harris, Schoneman, & Carrera, 2002;Miller & Kelley, 2005) reported a small positive correlation between general symptoms of anxiety and religion, but the relationship between these variables disappeared when socioeconomic status, social support, disability, and chronic illness were controlled for (Koenig, Ford, George, Blazer, & Meador, 1993;Koenig, George, Blazer, Pritchett, & Meador, 1993). Most reviews have found negative or no correlation between religiousness and anxiety in general (59 studies cited in Koenig, 1998) or between religiousness and OCD in particular (Hermesh, Masser-Kavitsky, & Gross-Isseroff, 2003;Greenberg & Shefler, 2002;Tek & Ulug, 2001;Okasha, Lotaief, Ashour, El Mahalawy, El Dawla, & El-Kholy, 2000).…”

“…Some reviews on religion and mental health have reported a small positive correlation between general symptoms of anxiety and religion (e.g., Harris, Schoneman, & Carrera, 2002;Miller & Kelley, 2005). Notably, though, the apparent relationship between these two variables disappeared when controlling for socioeconomic status, social support, disability, and chronic illness (Koenig, Ford, George, Blazer, & Meador, 1993;Koenig, George, Blazer, Pritchett, & Meador, 1993).…”

Christian religious functioning and trauma outcomes

“…The first three prayer functions predict lower anxiety levels and higher levels of posttraumatic growth while the deferring/avoiding prayer function predicted higher levels of trait anxiety Harris, Schoneman, & Carrera, 2002.…”