IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v16y2019i7p1238-d220711.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Role of Religion in Buffering the Impact of Stressful Life Events on Depressive Symptoms in Patients with Depressive Episodes or Adjustment Disorder

Author

Listed:
  • Louisa Lorenz

    (Department of Psychology, Division Psychopathology and Clinical Intervention, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
    Klinik im Hasel, Stationaere Therapie, 5728 Gontenschwil, Switzerland)

  • Anne Doherty

    (Liaison Psychiatry, University Hospital, H91 YR71 Galway, Ireland)

  • Patricia Casey

    (Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Eccles St., D07 R2WY Dublin, Ireland
    Department of Adult Psychiatry, University College Dublin, D07 R2WY Dublin, Ireland)

Abstract

Most studies into the role of religiousness in relation to depression severity have mainly found an inverse relationship between greater religiousness and lower levels of depressive symptoms. There is reason to assume that religiousness has a buffering effect on the relationship between stressful life events and depressive symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of religiousness in moderating the impact of stressors on depressive symptoms. n = 348 patients with either a depressive episode or adjustment disorder were assessed at referral to the liaison psychiatry services in three Dublin hospitals and n = 132 patients were followed up six months later. We assessed depressive symptoms, life events, social support, and religiosity, and used hierarchical and multiple linear regression for data analysis. The interaction of organised religious activity and the amount of life events was significant ( β = −0.19, p = 0.001) in the cross-sectional prediction of depressive symptoms while non-organised religious activity ( β = −0.23, p = 0.001) and intrinsic religiousness ( β = −0.15, p = 0.033) interacted significantly with life events in the longitudinal analysis. This study demonstrated that various dimensions of religiousness buffered the impact of life events on outcome.

Suggested Citation

  • Louisa Lorenz & Anne Doherty & Patricia Casey, 2019. "The Role of Religion in Buffering the Impact of Stressful Life Events on Depressive Symptoms in Patients with Depressive Episodes or Adjustment Disorder," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-13, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:7:p:1238-:d:220711
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/7/1238/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/7/1238/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kay I. Penny, 1996. "Appropriate Critical Values When Testing for a Single Multivariate Outlier by Using the Mahalanobis Distance," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 45(1), pages 73-81, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rahel Bachem & Jan Baumann & Volker Köllner, 2019. "ICD-11 Adjustment Disorder among Organ Transplant Patients and Their Relatives," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-16, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. César Merino-Soto & Alicia Boluarte Carbajal & Filiberto Toledano-Toledano & Laura A. Nabors & Miguel Ángel Núñez-Benítez, 2022. "A New Story on the Multidimensionality of the MSPSS: Validity of the Internal Structure through Bifactor ESEM," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(2), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Gyula Gyebnár & Zoltán Klimaj & László Entz & Dániel Fabó & Gábor Rudas & Péter Barsi & Lajos R Kozák, 2019. "Personalized microstructural evaluation using a Mahalanobis-distance based outlier detection strategy on epilepsy patients’ DTI data – Theory, simulations and example cases," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-30, September.
    3. Gökhan Akıncı & Lutfihak Alpkan & Bora Yıldız & Gaye Karacay, 2022. "The Link between Ambidextrous Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior in a Military Organization: The Moderating Role of Climate for Innovation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-19, November.
    4. Mauro Mussini, 2014. "Decomposing inequality change from the perspective of reranking and income growth between income groups," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 619-637, September.
    5. Marta Kowal & Piotr Sorokowski, 2022. "Sex Differences in Physical Attractiveness Investments: Overlooked Side of Masculinity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(7), pages 1-9, March.
    6. Stavros D Veresoglou & Barry Thornton & George Menexes & Andreas P Mamolos & Demetrios S Veresoglou, 2012. "Soil Fertilization Leads to a Decline in Between-Samples Variability of Microbial Community δ13C Profiles in a Grassland Fertilization Experiment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(9), pages 1-8, September.
    7. Petr Pleticha, . "Heterogeneity of Returns to Business R&D: What Makes a Difference?," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 0.
    8. Ronald Campoverde-Aguirre & Mauricio Carvache-Franco & Wilmer Carvache-Franco & María Almeida-Cabrera, 2022. "Analysis of the Quality of Service in Gastronomic Festivals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-17, November.
    9. Schwertman, Neil C. & Owens, Margaret Ann & Adnan, Robiah, 2004. "A simple more general boxplot method for identifying outliers," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 165-174, August.
    10. Philipp Kruse & Florian Rosing, 2023. "An Experimental Investigation of Perceived Differences in Personality and Leadership Attributes of Social Entrepreneurs Compared to for Profit Entrepreneurs and Non-Profit Organisations Leaders," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, vol. 32(1), pages 75-110, March.
    11. Neil H. Spencer, 2009. "Overcoming the multiple‐testing problem when testing randomness," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 58(4), pages 543-553, September.
    12. Schwertman, Neil C. & de Silva, Rapti, 2007. "Identifying outliers with sequential fences," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 3800-3810, May.
    13. Petr Pleticha, 2021. "Heterogeneity of Returns to Business R&D: What Makes a Difference?," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2021(3), pages 253-271.
    14. Philipp Kruse & Eleanor Meda Chipeta & Imke Ueberschär, 2023. "What Keeps Social Entrepreneurs Happy? Exploring Personality, Work Design, External Support, and Social Impact as Resources of Social Entrepreneurs’ Mental Well-Being," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-23, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:7:p:1238-:d:220711. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.