Very Religious Americans Report Less Depression, Worry; Relationship holds when controlling for key demographics.
Byline: Frank Newport, Sangeeta Agrawal, and Dan Witters
Synopsis: Very religious Americans are less likely to report having been diagnosed with depression over the course of their lives than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious. Very religious Americans are also less likely to report daily negative emotions such as worry, stress, and anger.
This is the second article in a special multipart series on religiosity and wellbeing in America. The first article explored the relationship between religiosity and wellbeing across the Well-Being Index and sub-indexes. This piece explores specific components within the Emotional Health Index.
PRINCETON, NJ -- Very religious Americans in the United States are less likely to report having been diagnosed with depression over the course of their lifetime than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious. This relationship between depression and religion, based on an analysis of more than 550,000 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index interviews, is statistically significant after controlling for major demographic and regional variables.
Nearly one in six (15.6%) very religious American adults have been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime. This group is about 24% less likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who are moderately religious and 17% less likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who are nonreligious.
It is important to note that Gallup asks Americans if they have been diagnosed with depression at any point in their life. These findings thus do not necessarily imply that the act of becoming religious will reduce or eliminate depression for those currently experiencing it.
For the purposes of this analysis, an American's relative degree of religiousness is based on responses to two questions asking about the importance of religion and church attendance, yielding three specific groups:
Previous research has shown that religiosity, defined either as church attendance or self-reported importance of religion, is related to age, gender, race and ethnicity, region and state of the country, socioeconomic status, marital status, and child-bearing status. Because wellbeing is also related to these variables, this analysis statistically controls for all of these characteristics. In the first article in this series, Gallup examined the overall positive relationship between religiosity and wellbeing.
Daily Negative Emotions Lower for Very Religious
Very religious...
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