Religious Service Attendance and Lower Depression Among Women—a Prospective Cohort Study

Abstract

Objective Previous studies on the association between religious service attendance and depression have been mostly cross-sectional, subject to reverse causation, and did not account for the potential feedback between religious service attendance and depression. We prospectively evaluated whether religious service attendance decreased risk of subsequent risk of depression and whether depression increased subsequent cessation of service attendance, while explicitly accounting for feedback with potential effects in both directions. Method We included a total of 48,984 U.S. nurses who were participants of the Nurses’ Health Study with mean age 58 years and who were followed up from 1996 to 2008. Religious services attendance was self-reported in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. Depression was defined as self-reported physician-diagnosed clinical depression, regular anti-depressant use, or severe depressive symptoms. Multivariate logistic regression and marginal structural models were used to estimate the odds ratio of developing incident depression, adjusted for baseline religious service attendance, baseline depression and time-varying covariates. Results Compared with women who never attended services, women who had most frequent and recent religious service attendance had the lowest risk of developing depression (odds ratio [OR] =0.71, 95% confidence interval [CI]:0.62–0.82). Compared with women who were not depressed, women with depression were less likely to subsequently attend religious services once or more per week (OR=0.74, 95% CI: 0.68–0.80). Conclusions In this study of U.S. women, there is evidence that higher frequency of religious service attendance decreased the risk of incident depression and women with depression were less likely to subsequently attend services.

Religion and Depression in South Korea: A Comparison between Buddhism, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism

“…Moreover, easy access of Protestant churches may account for the different participation rate between the Protestant respondents and respondents in other religious traditions. Consistent with previous research (Li et al 2016), this study showed that the highest level of depressive symptoms was in the category of occasional attendance.…”

On the promotion of human flourishing

“…Cross-sectional designs then cannot in general provide evidence for causality. For example, although religious community may protect against subsequent depression, it is also the case that those who become depressed are more likely to stop participating in religious community (38). Likewise, although it may be the case that marriage makes people happier, it is also the case that happy people are more likely to marry (39).…”

“…There is a large literature suggesting that attending religious services is associated with better health (102)(103)(104). Although much of the literature is methodologically weak, there are now numerous well-designed longitudinal studies that suggest that regular religious service attendance is associated with greater longevity (105-110), a 30% lower incidence of depression (38,107,111), a fivefold lower rate of suicide (112), better survival from cancer, and numerous other outcomes (102,104). Importantly, the evidence suggests that it is attending religious services, rather than private practices or self-assessed spirituality or religiosity, that is most strongly predictive of health (106,113).…”

Religion and health in Europe: cultures, countries, context

“…Again other mechanisms seem to be present. Current evidence from longitudinal studies suggests that service attendance is subsequently associated not only with all-cause mortality but also with less smoking, alcohol abuse, and drug use [1,38]; less depression and lower suicide rates [1,3,10,34,35]; greater meaning and purpose [39]; great optimism [27]; greater happiness and life-satisfaction [21]; lower crime [40,41]; greater social support and greater likelihood of developing a more extensive social and friendship network [21,25,27] as well as lower likelihood of divorce [25,42,43]. The mechanisms by which religious participation affects health may thus be numerous and quite diverse, and current evidence thus perhaps suggests that it may be the small contribution of many different pathways, rather than the substantial contribution of any specific one, that supplies religious service attendance with its powerful effects on health.…”