28 October 2008

Spirituality religiosity and depression.

Actually this seems to be a set of results that will require further research. Spirituality Protects Against Depression Better Than Church Attendance But it is worth noting this: "Researchers also found that those who attended religious services were 30 percent less likely to have had depression in their lifetime, and those who had high levels of existential well-being were 70 percent less likely to have had depression than those who had low levels of existential well-being."
It just seems like the irony is that if we have evolved, somehow, we have evolved to function better with God ... a bit of a beggar for the no-god squad.

2 comments:

Steve Hayes said...

It sounds a bit like a circular argument to me.

Those who are not depressed are 70% less likely to be depressed than those who are... who kiddeth whom?

What is existential well-being but lack of depression, and vice versa.

Reality is an illusion caused by mescaline deficiency.

Andii said...

I was puzzling over whether there did seem to be a bit of having it both ways in the way the results were presented at one point. I suspect that this is a quirk of the reporting; but it's why I was a little more cautious in how I presented it. As to 'what is existential well-being', that's the kind of question to take to the article itself; however there seem to be fairly well established indices for such things. I was assuming that the article was using those. So probably not quite as tightly circular as you present it.

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