New Study Shows Belief in God(s) Helps Mental Health
From the “we already knew this” department:Â A new study in the Journal of Affective Disorders shows that people with high or moderate levels of belief in God do better in short-term psychiatric treatment on measures of well-being, intent to hurt themselves, and depression.
I can’t find a link to the original study — here is a short article from psychcentral.com.
It would be nice to see some studies on Pagan beliefs and psychiatric outcomes. Still — I will take what I can get.
I post this here because I have been thinking about ways in which Pagan clients can better help their counselors be comfortable with spiritual and religious beliefs.
Studies that show that people believing in “God” — and I am going to assume for the moment that this would generalize to gods and goddesses — are mentally healthier would seem to me a positive step towards convincing the mental health profession that spiritual people are onto a good thing.
Mentioning such studies might be a good strategy if you encounter a therapist hesitant on the whole spiritual thing.