Does religion matter for wellbeing? - Understanding Society

Research says it may – with possible implications for the population’s mental health

Research suggests that attending religious services is associated with greater wellbeing and a reduced risk of mental ill health. But it is difficult to draw general conclusions, because much of the existing research comes from the United States, where Christianity is a major part of political and public life and most of the available evidence relies on cross-sectional data.

We wanted to examine the UK – a more secular country – to understand if the same is true here. Attending religious services could improve mental wellbeing through various channels, for example by increasing social interaction, reducing loneliness, and being able to access supportive services. But religion could also ostracise people from some social activities in secular contexts and increase people’s feelings of guilt.

We also wanted to examine a range of denominations, using different measures of wellbeing. Our hypothesis was that greater religious service attendance would benefit wellbeing across Christians and among members of minority religions in the UK, but that average wellbeing would be lower among Muslims and members of other minority religions, because they are more likely to suffer from discrimination, socioeconomic disadvantage, and the stress of acculturation – that is, stress caused by the need to adapt to different cultural expectations. The sample size of Understanding Society helped us, because it allowed us to study Muslims, who have been previously underexamined in research into religion and wellbeing. The longitudinal and household nature of the survey helped us to try and investigate if associations were causal.

Samples and measures

We used data from Understanding Society gathered between 2009 and 2014, when people were asked:

Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?
If so, which religion do you regard yourself as belonging to?
How often, if at all, do you attend religious services or meetings – weekly, monthly, yearly, never or practically never, or only at weddings, funerals etc.?
How much of a difference would you say religious beliefs make to your life – a great, some, a little, or no difference?

Wellbeing was measured using:

the Shortened Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS) – seven questions on participants’ feelings in the previous two weeks, including closeness to others and optimism for the future
the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) – 12 questions capturing anxiety, stress and depressive symptoms.

People from different ethnic groups can be part of the same religion, but have different experiences, so instead of dividing people by religious affiliation, we sorted them into ethnoreligious groups (where this was possible and still gave us a big enough sample size). For example, 95% of Pakistani and 93% of Bangladeshi respondents were Muslim, and 64% of Muslims were Pakistani or Bangladeshi, so we split Muslims into two groups: Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims and those of other ethnicity. We ended up with these two groups, plus white Christians, non-white Christians, the non-religious, and others (Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu etc. – the sample size in the study was not big enough for us to look at them individually.)

Methods

We examined associations between religiosity (measured in Wave 1) and wellbeing outcomes (from Wave 4) using linear regression, and then gradually adjusted our models to take other factors into account, such as age, gender, country of birth, marital status, education, employment, income, personality, general health, relationships with neighbours, the number of close friends, and baseline levels of wellbeing in Wave 1. We addressed missing data and panel attrition using a technique called Full Information Maximum Likelihood estimation. We also used multi-level models to see if differences in wellbeing are associated with differences in religious attendance among people from the same household.

Our findings

We found that Muslims had lower average mental wellbeing scores than Christians or those with no religious affiliation; however, we were not able to distinguish the effects of affiliation versus ethnicity.

More frequent religious service attendance was associated with better mental wellbeing – that is, people who go every week were more likely to report higher wellbeing than people who go monthly, annually or not at all. There was some evidence that this was particularly the case for those with religious affiliations – suggesting that the benefits of religious attendance are most pronounced among those who believe.

Going to services also appeared good for the wellbeing of members of minority religions. This suggests that attendance may act as a buffer against the negative effects of belonging to a minority group.

By contrast, the subjective importance of religion was not associated with higher mental wellbeing. In fact, people who said religion was important in their life reported worse mental health.

A limitation of this study was that despite the use of longitudinal data and the different analyses conducted we still cannot be sure if the associations we found were causal. For example, there may still be partial reverse causality. That is, it may not only be that people who go to services have better wellbeing, but also that mental ill health prevents people attending religious services. Alternatively, findings may be explained by another factor which we did not observe. However, it is very challenging to address causality in research questions such as ours. Randomised controlled trials for example are challenging in terms of feasibility and may be unethical.

Potential implications

If there is a causal link between going to a religious service regularly and having better wellbeing, this could have implications for government policy on mental health – depending on the mechanism which links service attendance to mental health. If religious attendance is one of many possible types of community participation, policies which increase such participation could improve mental health in the population.

For those with religious inclinations, this could mean increasing rates of religious service attendance – but religious involvement has been declining in recent years, so it is important to consider secular alternatives. Humanist and other civic organisations could help address this gap. An example at its infancy is the Sunday Assembly.

It may be that our increasingly individualised society is a cause of the worsening of mental health outcomes in recent decades, and that an increase in communal activities, religious or secular, could help address this.

Read the original paper