When going on a road trip, you wouldn’t leave without a map or GPS. In life, you also need navigation tools. For years, that was the purpose of organized religion, with its set of teachings and support systems. Now, this form of guidance is being thrown out the window.
Rates of depression and mental illness are rising at the same time that religious participation is decreasing. Perhaps we’re missing out on a valuable way to cope.
A new study predicts that religion will become extinct in nine countries, including Canada. The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting, indicates that religion will die out in Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.
Our civilization, and our minds, developed under the guidance of religion. Studies have shown that rates of depression and other mental illnesses shoot upwards among those who with no religious affiliation.
Having a map has its benefits.
“Most research has shown that religious participation, for the most part, is good and can be very helpful for battling depression,” writes Richard Petts, assistant professor of sociology at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health in the US also shows that depression is becoming more frequent among young adults between the ages 18 and 25. Interestingly, according to “Religious Participation in Early Adulthood,” a study from the American Sociological Association, this age group is also the one least likely be a practicing member of a religious group.
Intrinsically, people seem to have a desire to find the answers to eternal questions. For those living with mental illness, that desire is often even stronger.
“Depression ultimately is a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Religion tells us we have someone to help us and it gives us something to hope for,” says Fr. Tim Devine, associate pastor at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Ottawa.
Devine has counseled parishioners who are struggling with various forms of mental illness. He says that a faith-based perspective is particularly helpful.
This approach has been called religious coping and it involves drawing on religious beliefs and practices to understand and deal with life stressors. Various studies compiled by professors from Ohio’s Bowling Green State University indicate that weekly church attendance was associated with improvement of most of the physical and mental health behaviors examined.Though there is not necessarily a causal relationship between religious affiliation and mental illness, it seems unlikely that the correlation is purely coincidental.
However, it’s not all good. Religious beliefs can sometimes stand in the way of someone with a mental illness seeking help. This is one of the hypotheses behind why Jewish men are statistically more prone
to depression. According to clinical psychologist Steven Pirutinsky, in a study of mental illness among the Jewish population, “individuals hesitate to bring religious and spiritual issues to professionals.” Ottawa psychologist Dr. Eva Fisher agrees.
“Religious people are far more likely to deny their depression,” she says. “The stigma of depression is higher among people with religious beliefs. In psychotherapy, they are likely to be very self-critical as if seeing themselves through the lens of God as selfish, greedy, or perverted.”
The problematic and sometimes negative aspects of organized religion sometimes cause people to abandon it completely.
But as Austin Cline, a self-proclaimed atheist and formerly the regional director for the council for secular humanism, writes, “Americans weren’t prepared to abandon religion entirely. So, they created a new category which was still religious, but which no longer included the same traditional authority figures. They called it spirituality.”
This new movement focuses on an internalized spirituality, basically where everyone can believe what they want and no one is right or wrong.
In some ways, this form of spirituality can provide an escape from everyday life, which may be why yoga and superficial spirituality have become so common in Western cultures.
“In yoga philosophy texts we learn that to reach ‘Moksha Yoga’ is to attain enlightenment – a state of being that brings understanding of our true nature as sentient beings, opens a sense of deep liberation, and frees us from the suffering of every day life,” states the Moksha organization website. Moksha studios around the world encourage living according to their seven pillars: be healthy, be accessible, live green, sangha (community) support, outreach (random acts of kindness), live to learn, be peace.
The problem is this philosophy does little to address the eternal questions. Why are we here? What happens when we die?
In Islam, the Qur’an teaches that those afflicted with a mental illness should be helped and protected and it is viewed as an impairment of the mind. Traditionally another individual is assigned to help care for them and their property.
“As a Muslim, you get affected by life’s troubles and disturbing thoughts like everyone else, but you’re well equipped to deal with them because you have a clear roadmap of where you came from, where you’re going and why, so you have a head-start having this fundamental knowledge from its source. In other words, you’re resistant to existential emptiness,” writes Sahar El-Nadi on the Muslim website: A balanced leader.
This “roadmap” and the communal aspect of religion are often helpful for those who are struggling with mental illness. Not only does a faith community offer a support group, but it is also focused on the bigger picture, a larger whole. This is something that other support groups cannot offer.
Maybe, we shouldn’t disregard the value of organized religion so quickly after all.