Fearlessness about death and suicidality: does religious identity matter?

Abstract

Introduction: Religion is a salient aspect of patient background in treatment (Pargament, 1997). However, research investigating the role of religion in suicide is lacking and inconsistent (Gearing & Alonzo, 2018). The current study (1) clarifies the association between religious identity and fearlessness about death in a psychiatric sample and (2) tests whether religious identity moderates the association between fearlessness about death and suicidal ideation. Methods: Participants were 155 patients seeking treatment in a partial hospital program. Religious identity was assessed using the Identities in Treatment Scale (Hom et al., 2022). Fearlessness about death was assessed with two relevant items from the Acquired Capability With Rehearsal for Suicide Scale (George et al., 2016), as in prior studies (Shahnaz et al., 2020; Stewart et al., 2023).Results: Fearlessness about death interacted with religious identity to predict suicidal ideation, b = .47, 95% C.I. [.02, .91], p = .042. Conditional effects showed that greater fearlessness about death was associated with greater suicidal ideation among non-religious patients, b = -.56, 95% C.I. [-.88, -.24], p = .001, but not in religious patients, b = -.09, 95% C.I. [-.41, .22], p =.559.Conclusions: Our results suggest that fearlessness about death is a risk factor for suicidal ideation, but only among those who do not identify as religious. Results from this study inform theories of suicide and elucidate the influence of religious identity on likes among suicide risk factors and suicide-related outcomes.