Religiosity of depressed elderly inpatients

Abstract

Depressed elderly Australian inpatients are less religious than their North American counterparts. Nevertheless, religion remains important for a large minority of such individuals. Clinicians need to be aware that such individuals may turn to religion when depressed, especially to cope with the presence of physical disability.

Religion, spirituality and cardiovascular disease: research, clinical implications, and opportunities in Brazil

“…Our review uncovered many studies examining connections between R/S, depression, and anxiety. Of 444 studies assessing relationships between R/S and depression, 272 (61%) reported lower depression among the more R/S, including 119 (67%) of the 178 highest quality studies [82][83][84]. Of 299 studies examining relationships with anxiety, 147 (49%) reported inverse associations with R/S, and of the 67 highest quality studies, 38 (55%) did so [85][86][87].…”

Religiosity, spirituality, mental health, and mental health treatment outcomes in Australia: a systematic literature review

“…It would be a grave mistake to treat all faith communities as homogenous (Leavey & King, 2007), and the few Australian studies published on religiosity and health have taken this into account by focusing on specific age groups (Law & Sbarra, 2009;Payman, George, & Ryburn, 2008) or various ethnic communities (Chan, 2009). However, there are still many gaps within our understanding of Australian mental health treatment outcomes and religiosity.…”

“…For instance, using a sample of 122 Christian persons, Ryan and Francis (2012) used several variables from the Spiritual Assessment Inventory (Hall & Edwards, 2002) to quantify awareness of God in an effort to capture the presence of God in each participant's daily life, including impression management to measure spiritual behaviour and instability, which tries to capture the anxiety that stems from religious belief -such as being abandoned by God. Patient Religiosity was also measured in Payman et al (2008) study on depressed elderly Australians by the Duke University Religion Index (Koenig, George, & Peterson, 1997) -this five item scale asked about frequency of religious attendance, frequency of participation in private religious activities such as prayer, meditation, or Bible study, and intrinsic religiosity which asks patients to rate themselves to these questions: "My religious beliefs are what really lies behind my whole approach to life," "I try hard to carry my religion over into all other dealings in life," and, "In my life, I experience the presence of the Divine." Hilbers et al (2010) sample consisted of hospital patients.…”

“…Although international debate has stemmed over what spirituality entails, the Australian literature tends to group spirituality with an individual's belief in God or higher power, providing more defined boundaries around the dimensions of religiosity, and thus creating two clear variables for comparison in studies of mental health and/or psychiatric treatment outcomes -spirituality and religion (Mason, Deane, Kelly, & Crowe, 2009;Payman et al, 2008;Wilding et al, 2006). A similar pattern is emerging in the research from North America, including a Canadian study on spirituality, religion and suicidal behaviour in a nationally representative sample (Rasic et al, 2009), to a longitudinal study on spirituality, religious worship attendance and major depression in Baltimore (Rasic et al, 2011) and regression analysis on the relationship between religiosity, spirituality and correlates of depression and suicidal ideation of 149 undergraduate students at a state college (Lester, 2012).…”

“…It has been acknowledged that Australia and the USA differ notably in terms of levels of church attendance and belief in God or a higher power (Koenig, 2007;Payman et al, 2008). Although "religion" in the form of church attendance appears higher in the USA -recently cited by the US Religious Landscape Survey at around 90% (Lugo et al, 2008) -"spirituality" is nonetheless a part of many Australian's lives, with an estimated 70% of Australians reporting belief in God or a higher power (ABS, 2006).…”