Church-goers are less vulnerable to depression

Washington, Unites States, October 25: People who simply pray or meditate are likely to be more depressed in their lifetime, compared to those who regularly visit church and offer prayers, suggests a new study.

The novel study published on-line this month in Psychological Medicine suggests that a person's religiousness can offer insight into their risk for depressiondefine. The study shows that Church-goers are 30 percent more likely to keep depression at bay than non-church going people.

Lead researcher Joanna Maselko of Temple University and colleagues reached their findings after studying 918 participants. For the study, the researchers characterized the religiosity of all the participants in terms of three domains - religious service attendance or involvement with church; religious well-being, referring to the quality of a person's relationship with Divinity; and existential well-being, which refers to a person's sense of meaning and purpose in life.

After comparing each domain of religiosity to risk of depression, Maselko and colleagues found that those who attended religious services were 30 percent less likely to have had depression in their lifetime than those who never offered religious services.

Further, people in the group with higher levels of religious well-being were 1.5 times more likely to have had depression than those with lower levels of religious well-being, the U.S. researchers said.

In addition, the participants with high levels of existential well-being were 70 percent less likely to have had depression than those who had low levels of existential well-being.

"People with high levels of existential well-being tend to have a good base, which makes them very centred emotionally," said Maselko. "People who don't have those things are at greater risk for depression, and those same people might also turn to religion to cope."

Depression is a devastating illness that affects every aspect of a person’s life – physical, mental and emotional. It is characterized by a consistent low mood and loss of interest in usual day to day activities. The condition influences the sufferer’s self-esteem and perception of others, and a person with depression has difficulty in performing ordinary daily activities.

This kind of a mental disorder influences a person’s basic outlook towards life. It is a state of intense sadness, melancholia or despair that has advanced to the point of being disruptive to an individual's social functioning and/or activities of daily living. It often leads to constant negative thinking and sometimes substance abuse. Besides a person's general health, depression also affects his work, family life, sleeping and eating habits.