DATA AND METHODOLOGY: Data were obtained by a questionnaire survey in a large public hospital in a big metropolitan city of China. The final sample consisted of 1012 respondents with 237 (23.4%) being male and 775 (76.6%) being female. The respondents were of three groups: (1) Believers (n = 34; 3.5%); (2) Non-Believers or Atheists (n = 547; 55.8%); and (3) Agnostics or Fence-Sitters (n = 400; 40.8%). Suicidality was measured by the NCS-Suicidality Scale, and standard measures were employed for other major variables.
FINDINGS: In line with other recent studies in China, the religion rate among the urban adults remained low (3.5%). However, about 40.8% of the respondents chose "don't know" and could be fence-sitters on the issue of religious belief. Many of them are involved in various folk beliefs which may not be considered as religious. The religious believers were at higher risk of suicidality and depression than the atheists and the fence-sitters. However, the fence-sitters were higher than the believers and atheists on psychological strains, and they were higher on depression compared to the atheists.
CONCLUSION: The religious believers and religious fence-sitters have higher psychopathologic risks and suicidal risk than the atheist group. Religion as of low prevalence in Chinese societies is a social value deviant from the norm and its practitioners are likely to be marginalized or stigmatized. The Strain Theory of Suicide is used for detailed explanations.
METHODS: Data of 7068 participants (4418 Malays, 2080 Chinese and 570 Indians) aged ≥55 years that were collected as part of the community health survey conducted in 2013 in the South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) were analyzed using bivariate and multiple regressions. Analyses were stratified by ethnicity.
RESULTS: The importance of having an enriched religious/spiritual life was associated with higher scores of depression, anxiety and stress among Chinese and higher score of depression among Malays, while belief in a higher power was associated with better mental health among Malays, Chinese and Indians.
CONCLUSION: The current study showed that there were ethnic variations in the associations between religion and mental health, and the associations depended on the religious variable included in the analysis. The findings of this study showed that religion could be another potential channel to improve mental health among older adults by accommodating and understanding their religious beliefs.
AIM: The study aimed to examine resilience and its association with religiosity and religious coping among adolescent refugees living in Malaysia.
METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study conducted in five community-based learning centres in Malaysia from July 2019 till December 2019. A total of 152 refugees, aged 13 to 19-years-old, were recruited. The study gauged resilience using the 14-Item Resilience Scale (RS-14), the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) for religiosity and the Brief Religious Coping Scale (Brief RCOPE) for religious coping.
RESULTS: The majority of adolescent refugees portrayed moderate levels of resilience (43.5%). The study highlighted the interconnectedness between resilience and intrinsic religiosity (IR) (p religion (p
METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 504 Iranian older adult participants from Qazvin province were recruited between December 2015 and April 2016. They completed a questionnaire that included the Revised Adult Attachment Scale, the Life Satisfaction Index-Z, and the Herth Hope Index.
RESULTS: Participants in the study had a mean age of 66.20 years (SD: 5.76) and most of them were women (57.5%). A mediation model testing the direct relationships between attachment, hope, religiosity, and life satisfaction showed a positive relationship between close attachment and religiosity (β = .226, p
OBJECTIVE: The current study examines the association between religious affiliation and suicidality among college students in six provinces in China.
METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study involving 11,407 college students from six universities in Ningxia, Shandong, Shanghai, Jilin, Qinghai, and Shaanxi. We collected the data between October 2017 and March 2018 using self-report questionnaires. They included self-report measures of depression, psychache, hopelessness, self-esteem, social support, and life purpose.
RESULTS: Participants with a Christian affiliation had 1.5 times (95% CI: 1.14, 1.99, p = 0.004) higher odds of indicating an elevated suicide risk, 3.1 times (95% CI: 1.90, 5.04, p<0.001) higher odds of indicating a previous suicide attempt, and increased overall suicidality (B = 0.105, p < 0.001) after accounting for demographic and risk/protective factors. Christians also scored the highest in depression, psychache, hopelessness, and the lowest social support, self-esteem, and purpose in life. Muslims reported decreased suicidality (B = -0.034, p = 0.031). Buddhism/Daoism yielded non-significant results in the multivariate analyses.
CONCLUSIONS: Christian college students reported increased suicidality levels, perhaps due to public policies on religion. The decreased suicidality levels among Muslims may be attributed to higher perceived social support. The associations between religious affiliation and suicidality, depression, and hopelessness contrast sharply with US samples. This finding may be influenced by interactions between the religious denomination, individual, and social/political factors. This conclusion includes the possibility of anti-religious discrimination, which this paper did not investigate as a possible mediator and therefore remains a conjecture worthy of future investigation.
Materials and Methods: Study design was cross-sectional, in which sociodemographic data of respondents were collected through a validated questionnaire; results were analyzed by using validated data collection tool. The results were concluded on the basis of good, moderate, and poor response, which was evaluated through data analysis by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 20.0. A P < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Results: Respondents were 182 (44.4%) males and 228 (55.6%) females; better knowledge was recognized among the females (P < 0.001) with mean knowledge of 15.55 ± 2.7. Chinese population had good knowledge with statistically strong correlation with mean knowledge of 15.63 (P = 0.006). Likewise, Buddhism was reported to have good knowledge among all the religions. Rural population was underlined with lesser family income and they showed good practice and understanding (P = 0.006). Comparatively positive attitude was noticed among the females (P < 0.001) with mean attitude of 15.55 ± 2.7. The highest level of education in this study was postgraduate, which showed 77.1% good attitude. Postgraduate participants were having varied results with standard deviation of ±6.23. Statistically highly significant association was seen between the religion and attitude of respondents with the P < 0.001. Chinese medicine is widely used, but religious difference was found among the races. Similar difference was found in knowledge and practice among the population of rural side and low family income compared to urban population with higher income and access to allopathic medicine.
Conclusions: Despite having better practice among the Malaysian population, still the knowledge needs to be disseminated among the population for the overall use of traditional Chinese medicine with safety to improve health and quality of life in Malaysia.
METHODS: The study involved 1790 community-dwelling older adults aged 60 and above living with at least one chronic medical condition. The Satisfaction with Life Scale and Revised Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religious Orientation Scale were used to measure life satisfaction and religious orientation. Moderated hierarchical multiple regression was used to test the moderation effect.
RESULTS: Results showed that while intrinsic religiosity was positively associated with life satisfaction, extrinsic religiosity was found to have a negative relationship with life satisfaction. Gender moderated the association between intrinsic religiosity and life satisfaction.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggested that the positive impact of intrinsic religiosity on life satisfaction was stronger in older women living with morbidity and multimorbidity. Healthcare practitioners can help disadvantaged older women in identifying their religious values and practices to improve their subjective wellbeing.
METHOD: A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. We used F and χ2 tests and correlation analyses to report descriptive statistics. Multi-group path models with (i) a zero-inflated Poisson distribution and, (ii) a Binomial distribution were used to model the number of occurrences of suicidal ideation, and occurrence of a suicide attempt, respectively.
RESULTS: Religiosity was negatively associated with acceptability of suicide, but it was positively related to punishment after death across the 11 countries. Religiosity was negatively associated with ever experiencing suicidal ideation, both directly and indirectly through its association with attitudes towards suicide, especially the belief in acceptability of suicide. Neither positive nor negative religious coping were related to suicidal ideation. However, religiosity was negatively related to suicide attempts among those who experienced suicidal ideation at least once. This association was mediated through the belief in acceptability of suicide and religious coping. Negative religious coping was positively associated with suicide attempts probably because it weakened the protective effects of religiosity.
CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study suggest that the effects of religiosity in the suicidal process operate through attitudes towards suicide. We therefore conclude that clinical assessment as well as research in suicidology may benefit from paying due attention to attitudes towards suicide.