Amsterdam, 24 February (ENI)--People who have had a Christian
upbringing but who later abandon the church are more likely to suffer
from depression as they grow older than people who remain faithful to
Christianity.
This is one of the main conclusions drawn by a researcher and
physician Arjam Braam, of the psychiatry department of the faculty of
socio-cultural science at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit (Free
University).
Braam is defending his doctoral thesis this month on the subject of
"Religion and depression in later life".
Before drawing his conclusions, Braam interviewed more than 3000
people aged between
55 and 85 in three different regions of The Netherlands. The questions
focused on the relationship between health and religion.
Initially Braam presumed that people with a religious upbringing would
be
more vulnerable to depression than those who believed they had
liberated themselves from the need to attend church. He expected the
survey to show that elderly Reformed Christians in particular would be
more ponderous and therefore more given to depression.
But his own research proved these views to be false.
The percentage of elderly people suffering from forms of depression
varied from 7 to 8 per cent in small villages where most people were
Reformed Christians to 20 per cent in
Amsterdam, the city with the highest percentage of people who had left
the church.
Commenting on his results, Braam said it seemed that people who had
taken a conscious decision to leave the church still felt some
bitterness
as they grew older. They had no experience of comfort, forgiveness or
grace, he said.
The researcher acknowledged that church social life could be a major
factor in alleviating depression. But his survey showed, he said, that
religion itself played an important role in avoiding depression.
However, according to an article in the latest issue of The Lancet, a
leading medical journal, there is no medical evidence that faith cures
disease or improves health. "Even in the best studies, the evidence of
an
association between religion, spirituality, and health is weak and
inconsistent," according to Dr Richard Sloan, a psychologist who, with
colleagues at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York,
reviewed research into the healing power of faith. They found most of
the studies were poorly designed and the results unconvincing.
Speaking of the apparent risks of research into the links between faith
and health, Braam said it would be all too easy to advise people to
stay
within the church to overcome depression. But he hoped that in medical
circles the subject of religion could be treated with more respect and
openness. "Psychiatrists are too often sceptical about religion. It
could be
very useful for those in medicine to know which people benefit from
religion and which people suffer from it," Braam said.
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