Objective: To estimate the associations between measures of religiousness and depression
and to determine if these associations have changed over the period 1952 to 1992.
Methods: Data were drawn from 2,398 individuals from the 1952 and 1992 cross
sectional surveys of the Stirling County Study as a means of studying time trends. For this
thesis, questions about frequency of religious worship attendance, frequency of saying
grace, religious importance were employed to develop a scale of secularism. The individual
questions and the scale were analyzed in terms of the prevalence of depression at each time
point. Logistic regression was used to determine associations of depression with religion
variables, adjusted for demographic and other covariates.
Results: Individuals who attended religious services weekly were over two times less
likely to meet criteria for depression than infrequent attenders and this relationship did not
change over time. Associations between religious attendance and depression were stronger
among women and the medically healthy compared to men and those with a medical
condition. Being more secular was associated with higher odds of depression among
females.
Conclusions: Religious attendance has consistently been associated with lower
depression over a forty year period, irrespective of marked declines in population-level
religious behaviors. Associations between religiousness and depression may be stronger in
females than in males.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:NSHD.ca#10222/15481 |
| Date | 18 July 2012 |
| Creators | Rasic, Daniel |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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