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Identifier	Thesis 1622
Author	Niziolek, Renata Z
Title	The relationship between religion and mental health / Renata Z. Niziolek
Publisher	Central Connecticut State University
Date	2000
Resource Type	Master's Thesis
Notes	Throughout the evolution of psychology, scientific study and religion have been separated into independent realms of knowledge; probably due in large part to the exclusion of religious experience from secular life in Western culture. The area of psychology in particular reflects the negative views held by scholars toward religion. While religion does influence thought and behavior, it has often been presented as having a deleterious effect on mental health. In fact religion was considered to be closely involved in the etiology of psychoses, more specifically schizophrenia, delirium, and dementia. In recent years, however, increasing research has been devoted to the religion-health relationship, much of which has indicated that religion and spiritual experiences contribute to mental and physical health by alleviating stress as well as by providing social support resources. In addition, research has suggested that religion or certain aspects of spiritual experiences such as meditation and prayer may transform the mental appraisal of life events and thus influence the subsequent psychological as well as physical reaction. Overall, studies seem to show that religious coping is especially popular and effective for women, elders, and African- Americans. Due to enculturation in a predominantly White patriarchal society, these social groups may be especially vulnerable to stress and may seek out religion, an easily accessible resource, in order to deal with stressors such as racism or mortality. Furthermore, mounting empirical evidence suggests that the impact of religious beliefs is increasingly strong in recovery from illness, illness prevention and health enhancement, suicide and substance abuse prevention, preventing heart disease and high blood pressure, and negotiating with pain. Subsequently, religion and spiritual experience may function as an instrumental means of coping with not only psychological but also physical stressors, largely through the maintenance of hope. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between religion, spirituality, and mental health in 60 participants from Central Connecticut State University. This study used three measures of religion: The Index of Core Spiritual Experience-INSPIRIT (Kass, Friedman, Leserman, Zuttermeister, and Benson, 199 1), Intrinsic Religious Motivation-IRM (Hoge, 1972), and Extrinsic Religiosity (Krause, 1998), as well as The Symptom Checklist 90 Revised - SCL - 90 - R (Derogatis, 1994) to measure mental health status. The results revealed that there were significant differences between participants who described themselves as Religious and Non- Religious groups. These were marked on the Obsessive Compulsive, Depression, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Ideation, and Psychoticism subscales of the SCL-90-R. Thus, the Religious group reported less psychological disturbances and had a more favorable overall mental status than the Non-Religious group. Pearson Correlations indicated that those participants who were members of a religious denomination reported core spiritual experiences (distinct events that resulted in a personal conviction of a Higher Power's existence), expressed greater inward depth of religious feeling, and greater orientation towards religious activities on the religious scales. Since there has been some debate in prior research concerning the constructs of religion and spirituality, the present study also investigated the spirituality-religion connection. The findings in this study revealed that spirituality, intrinsic religiosity, and extrinsic religiosity were correlated on the three religious scales. Subsequently, although they may be different entities, spirituality and religion appear to function on a parallel continuum. These findings are discussed in terms of the implications on mental health.
Subject	Psychology and religion Mental health -- Religious aspects
Department	Department of Psychology
Advisor	Mate-Kole, C. Charles
Type	Text
Digital Format	application/pdf
Language	eng
OCLC number	48115974
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