Model of Individual Health Effects from Religion/Spirituality: Supporting Evidence

Abstract

This chapter is the first of thirteen reviews in this volume providing a public health perspective on the empirical evidence relating religion and spirituality (R/S) to physical and mental health. This chapter emphasizes an essentially epidemiologic perspective, reviewings evidence bearing on a “generic” model of how an individual’s engagement in religion/spirituality may causally affect that individual’s health through pathways that include health behaviors, social connections and support, ability to draw upon distinctively religious/spiritual methods of coping, and mental health. In US-based and often in international and non-Western samples, R/S factors tend to correlate with healthier profiles on social connections, health behaviors, substance abuse, mental health, and psychological well-being. R/S coping is multidimensional and adds incremental predictiveness beyond measures of secular coping. Hundreds of studies link positive R/S coping to better adjustment, and negative forms of R/S coping to worse adjustment.

R/S factors tend to correlate favorably with conscientious personality, although causal direction remains uncertain. R/S is also positively correlated with diverse health-related character strengths that include forgiveness, kindness/prosociality, and hope.

This chapter also discusses various additional constructs often suggested for interpretation of R/S-health linkages. We conceptually disaggregate empirical evidence on prayer into evidence regarding effects on the person praying (the pray-er) and effects on the prayed-for person (pray-ee). We also note evidence for health linkages of “borderline spiritual constructs” such as meditation, mindfulness, and yoga, which exist in both spiritual and non-spiritual forms. Only a small number of studies have examined linkages between R/S and mindfulness, with several reports of positive associations.

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