God Is the Key to Mental Health—Sue Me

Research shows the mental health benefits of Christianity

In my previous post, I introduced the first episode of my podcast show, Soul Science. In the show, I cited a 2016 study from the Harvard School of Public Health which showed that American nurses who regularly attended church services enjoyed a manifold health-benefit advantage over their peers who did not go to church. That advantage included lower rates of depression and suicide. As I stated in the show, the study looked at more than 70,000 nurses over the course of more than fifteen years. The study is so large that the results are considered to be highly reliable. And because the study is of American nurses only, the researcher himself pointed out that religious observance meant some form of Christianity.

Or “maybe not”???

Only a couple of days after I published my article, another Patheos article showed up declaring just the opposite research findings:

Equally troubling, researchers have found that Christians have a higher than average likelihood of clinical depression, and describe it as a “pandemic.”–https://psychiatryresource.com/articles/stigma-and-7-million-depressed-christians

That article comes from James Travis Young over on the Progressive Channel. I was curious about Young’s sources, so I thought I should investigate the situation. His link takes you to a website called The Psychiatry Resource. It is the private blog of a doctor by the name of Len Lantz and one of his associates.  Here is  how Lantz arrived at his numbers on Christian mental health:

The actual article:

For my calculations, I used data from 2017, 2018 and 2019 from the Pew Research Center. From their data set, it is estimated that 106.8 million Christians attend church at least once or twice a month. The National Institute of Mental Health lists the prevalence of having a major depressive episode in 2017 at 7.1%. Applying the 7.1% rate to 106.8 million Christians allows us to arrive at the number 7.6 million. So, calculating the number of Christians with depression becomes a matter of simple math, right?

Maybe not.

Setting the record straight

Lantz is assuming that the rate of Christian depression is 7.1%.  He has no study or research to confirm that number! But even if the number is as high as 7.1%, that does not mean that Christians have a higher rate of depression than normal. It would mean that Christians have the same rate of depression as the general population because 7.1% is the rate of the general population according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Thus, Travis Young’s source does not assert that “Christians have a higher than average likelihood of clinical depression,” as Young alleges. Young has misrepresented Dr. Lantz’s statistics. And further, the only time I could find Lantz using the word “pandemic,” he was referring to the Covid pandemic—not a depression pandemic among Christians, as Travis Young states.

Dr. Lantz actually goes on to cite research that shows that Christians have lower rates of depression:

CHRISTIANITY MIGHT BE ASSOCIATED WITH LOWER DEPRESSION RATES

There is research showing both increased and decreased rates of depression in Christians compared to the general population. However, one of the largest metanalyses suggests there is a minimal-to-mild decrease in depression rates among Christians (Smith et al. Psychol Bull. 2003). There are some challenges with larger studies as they often do not look at the Christian religion alone, although studies of Christians predominate these metanalyses. The actual finding in medical research is that religiosity is associated with slightly lower rates of depression (Thomas, et al. Religions. 2020).

This is a conversation worth having: Is God the answer?

Notice that in the Lantz excerpt above, he cites no sources for the thesis that depression rates are higher for Christians. His actual sources point to lower rates of depression for Christians—exactly what the Nurses’ Study found, which I discussed on my podcast show.

Thus, one takeaway from this discussion is that there is plenty of research out there which shows that Christians enjoy better mental health than average. What are we to make of this fact? What does it all mean? James Travis Young is certainly correct to caution us against jumping to supernatural conclusions. On the other hand, they can’t be ruled out either. Maybe God IS the answer to our mental health problems. Who knows?

Let me be the first to admit that this subject matter is complicated. We should not pretend that we have all of the answers when we are grappling with such a complex matter. In fact, there is solid evidence that religious practice improves mental health. Now, what are we to make of this evidence?  Here at SOUL SCIENCE, we are committed to exploring the thesis that science may be discovering evidence of a spiritual soul in its study of mental health. It just might be that the study of mental health may offer a gateway to spiritual discovery—to the discovery of the soul, to the discovery of God, Himself.

Or, maybe not. There are other natural explanations to account for the link between the mind and spiritual practice as well. There is room for legitimate disagreement and debate here. I wrote a 300-page book on the subject, and I could have written 300 more! So let’s talk about it!