Religion is Back
Spirituality without Religion
There are many studies showing that religion and spirituality help with depression. Here are just a few.
​Overview
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Spirituality in the absence of religiosity confers a greater risk for mental illness
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2020
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People with a spiritual understanding in the absence of a religious framework appear to have the worst mental health
British Journal of Psychiatry, 2013
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Spiritual but not religious participants score higher on measures of schizotypy
Schizotypy is vulnerability for schizophrenia-spectrum psychopathology
Cognition, 2017
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'Spiritual But Not Religious' Is Associated With Depression
Psychology Today, 2018
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When people experience a decline in faith, they report a decrease in positive emotions connected with several factors, including reducing religious practices, moving away from positive core religious beliefs, reduced social relationships related to service to others, and a loss of positive emotion generating meaning in life from service to others (Krause & Pargament, 2016).
As fewer people participate in formal religious practice, often moving away from the beliefs and rituals of their family of origin, more and more people are becoming “spiritual but not religious” (Willard & Norenzayan, 2017).
As more people move away from formal belief and seek meaning through personalized spiritual exploration, there is a proliferation of goods and services related to yoga, eastern practice, meditation centers, spiritual retreats etc. d meaning. Meditation centers, yoga practices and related businesses with sophisticated, eye-catching branding and high-powered marketing campaigns are becoming as prominent as traditional houses of worship. But spirituality, which often replaces traditional religious practice, may not provide the same benefit.
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DIY religions: more harm than good
Religion news blog​​, 2008
Meditation, crystal therapy, self-help books – think they’re making you happier? Think again. A Brisbane academic has found a strong link between new-age spirituality and poor mental health in young people.
https://www.religionnewsblog.com/20414/diy-religion
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Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households
British Journal of Psychiatry, 2013
Examined spirituality, religiosity and psychiatric symptoms among 7403 participants in the third National Psychiatric Morbidity Study in England. Found that “people with a spiritual understanding in the absence of a religious framework appear to have the worst mental health.” Those with a spiritual understanding of life in the absence of a religious framework had higher rates of drug addiction, abnormal eating attitudes, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, neurotic disorders, and use of psychotropic medication.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23174516/
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A lonely search? Risk for depression when spirituality exceeds religiosity.
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease , 2018.
Greater spirituality than religiosity significantly predicted subsequent increases in depressive symptoms and risk for major depressive disorder.
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Spiritual-but-Not-Religious identity associated with worse physical and mental health
Journal of Religious Health, 2022
Identifying as "spiritual but not religious" was found to be associated with worse physical and mental health compared to youth who were consistently religious.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35301635/
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Religion, spirituality, and mental health and social behaviour in young adulthood: A longitudinal study
Rosemary Aird, University of Queensland Doctoral Dissertation, 2007
Young adults who endorse non-traditional religious/spiritual beliefs are at greater risk for poorer mental health and aberrant social behaviour, including anxiety/depression, disturbed ideation, suspiciousness and paranormal ideation, high total PDI scores, and antisocial behaviour. These results suggest that a non-traditional religious/spiritual belief system involves more than mere rejection of traditional religious doctrine. Their focus on self-fulfillment and self-improvement and the lack of emphasis on others’ wellbeing appears to have the potential to undermine a person’s mental health and social relationships.
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"Spiritual but not religious": Cognition, schizotypy, and conversion in alternative beliefs
Cognition, 2017
The spiritual but not religious are more likely to hold paranormal beliefs and have an experiential relationship to the supernatural (e.g. mystical experiences and feelings of universal connectedness). In a sample of Americans (n=1013), we find that the SBNR participants score higher on measures of schizotypy than the religious or non-religious. Schizotypy is defined as both a dimension of personality and the phenotypic manifestation of underlying vulnerability for schizophrenia-spectrum psychopathology.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28544975/
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Spiritual but not religious? Evidence for two independent dispositions
Journal of Personality, 2006
Some psychologists treat religious/spiritual beliefs as a unitary aspect of individual differences, but subjective spirituality and tradition-oriented religiousness are empirically highly independent and have distinctly different correlates in the personality domain.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16958702/
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​For further study:​
More spiritual than religious: Concurrent and longitudinal relations with personality traits, mystical experiences, and other individual characteristics
Frontiers in Psychology, 2023
This study compared German and American adults (n = 3,491) who were more religious than spiritual (MRTS), more spiritual than religious (MSTR), equally religious and spiritual (ERAS), and neither religious nor spiritual (NRNS).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9846486/
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A Primer for Mental Health Practitioners on the "Spiritual but Not Religious" and the "Nones"
Journal of Nervous Mental Disorders, 2020
This article aims to help clinicians understand contemporary trends in patient religious and spiritual orientation for patients who identify as spiritual but not religious (SBNR) and None (i.e., no religious affiliation). Empirical data are considered, including what the literature reveals regarding mental health outcomes and SBNRs and Nones.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32282550/
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