RELIGIOUSLY active men and women are less likely to become alcoholic or suffer from general anxiety than those who never go to church, suggests a US study. They are also less likely to suffer from general anxiety. But women who start or stop going to church are up to three times more likely to suffer anxiety than those who don’t change their ways, while men who stop going to church do not suffer mentally at all.
The suffering of the women who changed their religious practice was perhaps a symptom of underlying psychological distress, the researchers, Dr Joanna Maselko, of Temple University, and Dr Stephen Buka, of Harvard, suggested.
Their findings are based on data from 718 people from Rhode Island, 43 per cent of whom attended church. Sixty-two per cent of the sample was Roman Catholic, and 32 per cent Protestant.
The researchers wanted to know whether changing religious activity changed the likelihood of having a psychiatric disorder. Many studies had shown that churchgoing and other religious activity lowered lifetime rates of serious depression. Research had also shown that church attendance helped sufferers from a psychiatric problem to cope better and reduced their risk of suicide. But it was not known what would happen if people stopped churchgoing or suddenly took it up.
Women who started or stopped being religiously active were more likely to become dependent on drink, and more than three times more likely to suffer anxiety than women who kept up their churchgoing or never started it. But men who changed their level of religious activity were “at significantly lower risk of depression as compared to the men who remained active”.
The research was published online in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology in October.
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