Is Religion Good for Your Health?: The Effects of Religion on Physical and Mental Health

150 Pages·1997·1.778 MB·English

by  Harold G Koenig

Is Religion
Good for Your Health?
The Effects of Religion
on Physical and Mental Health
HAWORTH Religion and Mental Health
Harold G. Koenig, MD
Senior Editor
A Gospel for the Mature Years: Finding Fulfillment by Knowing
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Is Religion Good for Your Health? The Effects of Religion on Physical
and Mental Health by Harold Koenig
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Is Religion
Good for Your Health?
The Effects of Religion
on Physical and Mental Health
Harold G. Koenig, MD, MHSc
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LONDON AND NEW YORK
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First published by
The Haworth Pastoral Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton,
NY 13904-1580
© 1997 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Koenig, Harold George.
Is religion good for your health? : the effects of religion on physical and mental health I
Harold G. Koenig.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
0-7890-0166-7
ISBN 0-7890-0229-9 (pbk. : alk. paper).
1. Health-Religious aspects. 2. Mental health-Religious aspects. 3. United States-Statistics,
Medical. 4. United States-Statistics, Vital. 5. United States-Religion-1960. I. Title.
BL65.M4K64 1997
200'.l '3--<lc2l
96-48053
ClP
To Charmin, my lovely wife;
Jordan, my strong and handsome son;
and Rebekah, my precious little girl.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harold G. Koenig, MD, MHSc, completed his undergraduate
education at Stanford University, his medical school training at the
University of California at San Francisco, and his geriatric medi­
cine, psychiatry, and biostatistics training at Duke University Medi­
cal Center. He.is currently on the faculty at Duke University as an
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and an Assistant Professor of
Internal Medicine, and is director of the Program on Religion,
Aging, and Health. Dr. Koenig has published extensively in the
fields of mental health, geriatrics, and religion, with over 100 scien­
tific articles, 22 book chapters, and seven books. His research on
religion and health has been featured on National Public Radio,
ABC World News Tonight, NBC Evening News, CBS Evening News
and CBS Morning News, Ivanhoe Broadcast News, and in journals
and newspapers such as Arthritis Today, The Daily Telegraph (Lon­
don), The Guardian (Europe), and other local, national, and interna­
tional programs and periodicals. In 1995, he was one of the conven­
ers of a conference sponsored by the National Institute on Aging on
the topic of "Religion, Aging, and Health," and in 1996 he orga­
nized a symposium on religion and health at the American Associa­
tion for the Advancement of Science, the largest science organiza­
tion in the world. He is the recipient of a five-year Mental Health
Academic Award from the National Institute of Mental Health to
study depression in older persons with medical illness. As well, he
has received grants from the Retirement Research Foundation and
the Sir John Templeton Foundation to study the relationship
between religion and health.
CONTENTS
Foreword ix
David 0. Moberg
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Mrs. Bernard's Story 5
Chapter 2: Societal Trends in the Twentieth
and Twenty-First Centuries 9
Demographic Trends 10
Health Trends 11
Family Trends 15
Economic Trends 1 7
Community Resources 19
Summary 19
Chapter 3: Negative Effects of Religion on Health 23
Sigmund Freud 23
Albert Ellis 25
Wendell Watters 26
Other Mental Health Professionals 27
Primary Care Physicians 28
Summary 30
Chapter 4: Are Americans Becoming Less Religious? 33
Religious Beliefs 33
Importance of Religion 36
Influence of Religion on Life 36
Religious Affiliation 3 7
Church Membership 3 8
Church Attendance 38
Religious Television 43
Prayer 43
Bible Reading 44
Religion and Aging 44
Summary 46
Chapter 5: Religion and Mental Health 49
Religious Coping 50
Well-Being and Life Satisfaction 53
Depression and Suicide 55
Anxiety 63
Alcohol and Drug Abuse 63
Treatment Studies 66
Possible Mechanisms of Effect 67
Summary 71
Chapter 6: Religion and Physical Health 77
Direct and Indirect Influences 78
Diseases of the Blood Vessels and Heart 82
Cancer 90
All-Cause Mortality 92
Summary 93
Chapter 7: Conclusions and Reanalysis 101
Effects on Mental Health 101
Effects on Physical Health 102
Pathological Aspects of Religion Reanalyzed 104
Summary 111
Chapter 8: Implications 119
Health Professionals 119
Religious Professionals 122
Public Policymakers 124
Medical Researchers 125
Laypersons 126
Summary 127
General Reviews of the Research Literature 129
Index 131
Foreword
The myth of a Fountain of Youth has enticed many people
through the centuries. Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando de Soto,
and Panfilo de Narvaez are among the sixteenth-century Spanish
explorers who were motivated, at least in part, by that legend to
search for the fountain in the New World of America that is now
part of the United States. The natives of Central America
believed as well that a mystical spring somewhere to their north
gave water that would cure human ills and restore youth to those
who drank it.
We still seek the Fountain of Youth-no longer in the naive
belief that it is an actual spring of waters that miraculously brings
healing and youth, but rather in the sophisticated modern faith
that medical, pharmaceutical, and genetic scientific research will
eventually uncover all mysteries of human disability, illness, and
aging, thus enabling us to live longer and happier lives or per­
haps even to find an earthly immortality for our grandchildren, if
not for ourselves.
In this search, many areas of the complex interdisciplinary
field known as gerontology, the science of aging, have received
extensive attention, so much so that one could quite correctly say
that it has become a flourishing new science. At the same time,
the study of religion and aging has languished and lagged
behind. Only recently has religious gerontology begun to attain a
position of respect within the health-related professions. This has
occurred partly as a result of societal trends. It also is a result of
significant research done by many scholars and scientists, among
ix