Another interesting report?

JessM I love the alliterative quality of your last sentence. Pearson's Correlation Coefficient Calculator which may or may not prove causation

It is most interesting because the majority of research in this area is in N America and it has generally shown the opposite effect i.e. church membership etc etc is good for your health and wellbeing. These findings are made much of in certain quarters.
Of course correlations do not prove causation.

I think some churches home in on those with mh problems. I had a friend with mh issues who became involved with a born again sect. Very quickly she began to talk about her illness being due to her lack of faith and went to expensive weekend counselling sessions which were supposed to cure her. She has bi-polar, DID, PTSD and a host of other traits. She is not curable.

At first she accepted my guarded comments and suggestions that she shouldn't give up her meds and nhs support without at least talking things through with her physciatrist. Then she started to talk about how the devil tested her faith by using people she thought of as friends. Soon after she stopped talking to me and other friends who challenged her Church teachings. We didn't challenge her faith or Christianity just the faith/illness issue.

I wish the research had a category for people 'brought up religious but rejected it'. My entirely personal observation is that many people with depression and anxiety 'confess' to a big gap in their emotional life which religious belief once filled or suffer severe guilt for not living up to the tenets which were instilled in them as children. During training as a counsellor we were never asked about our personal beliefs, or lack of them nor trained in how to respond to 'clients' tormented (or comforted) by things religious or spiritual. We were taught that the causes of neuroses were to be found in sexual, relationship and family dynamics or traumatic events. Come to think of it we were not alerted to chemical imbalances in the brain as a cause of mental health problems either!

I agree that much more research is needed and would add that some of that research should be undertaken from a fresh angle, outwith the confines of the straightjacket of current thinking about mental health issues.

That was my first thought too when, my experience with close relatives with mental health issues is that they tend to seek out strange religions

Certainly more research needed. Perhaps some people are already predisposed in experiencing anxiety or depression, and look to self-medicate with drugs and/or medication. Thoughts about spirituality may possible be just another way of trying to 'feel better'.

As the article says, much more research is needed. It could be a correlation, not necessarily causal. I wonder whether some people look for 'spiritual' meaning in their life because they have been exposed to, observed, or experienced traumatic events, so therefore would be more likely to have mental health issues. Being willing to explore your 'spiritual' being shouldn't bring on mental illness in itself - should it?