Self-Focused Religious Beliefs — Poorer Mental Health?
Are young people taking up, or making up, new forms of spirituality uniquely concerned with self-fulfilment? Does this lead to individualism at the expense of society and their own mental health? Or is this a scare story which gets cause and effect mixed up?
A University of Queensland study quoted in Physorg.com finds that “young adults with a belief in a spiritual or higher power other than God were at more risk of poorer mental health and deviant social behaviour than those who rejected these beliefs”, with young men holding “non-traditional religious views [...] at twice the risk of being more anxious and depressed than those with traditional beliefs”.
The researchers saw the common thread in the shift from traditional religion to a non-religious spirituality as individualism, with a focus on self-improvement and fulfilment which they saw as detrimental to our mental health, and which is strongly affected by the quality of relationships. Lack of social responsibility and collective interests were also cited as reasons for a more fragmented, anxious society, and concentration on personal growth was seen as contradictory to positive social change.
Young people were apparently mixing and matching traditions and influenced by media as certain religions with celebrity followers become “trendy”. Many of them probably fall between the categories of the study with its rather strange classification “one God” or “not-God” as if a couple of traditional monotheistic religions had a monopoly on God, and as if all other forms of spirituality could be classified as belief in “a spiritual or higher power”. Buddhism certainly does not fit anywhere in the scheme…but this is by the by.
The point could of course be put the other way round, that those with poorer mental health and deviant social behaviour were likely to cast around for meanings and adopt unconventional religious beliefs. If they are anxious and depressed then something in the traditional framework is maybe not sufficient for them? It does not seem that their new religious beliefs can be proved to be the cause of anything. The study seems to me rather to describe the world we are living in today and then to take a rather misplaced moral tone about it.
Personally I see no necessary contradiction between self-fulfilment and care for others — it is hard to imagine self-fulfilment in a vacuum, without satisfactory relationships and a feeling of being active and responsible in society. Individualism in society may be an isolating trend, but it is surely down to many more factors, e.g. economic and cultural, than people’s spiritual beliefs.
The way out of this isolation may well be the forging of new kinds of relationships. Traditional religion will adapt, new forms of spirituality will develop, older ones be rediscovered. The important thing is for people to find meaning and use it to inform what they do.
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This article was last reviewed by on Monday, 21st January 2008. You can leave a response below.
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21st January 2008
Personally I feel that for a person to have poor mental health, it is not possible to pinpoint a single cause like belief in non-traditional religious belief systems, like belief in powers other than God. Instead if the studies have shown such a result that those who have non-traditional religious belief are at the risk of poor mental health, one of the cause may be the unconscious fear of being different from the majority which make them stand out of the crowd as far as external expression of the religious belief system is concerned.Another important cause is that their weakness of thoughts or believes. Any thought only if it is 100% trusted, it gives strength to the mind. Even the non- believers in God usually have a strong argument that God doesnt exist. So it becomes the matter of the strength of the thought on the non-traditional religious belief. Any thought if it has to be strong enough, either you have heard it from your childhood or you strongly desire it or you are emotionally attached to it or you have many people to share with you the same feeling in common. So all these things are not there for person who has a non-traditional religious belief. So obviously he or she have all the vulnerability to become poor in Mental Health. As we know everyone has a search for the superpower and reaches at one conclusion regarding the same in his or her adulthood.