"The impaired mental health stigma against secular [individuals] is, at
the very least, an exaggeration,” write Jon T. Moore of the Veterans
Affairs Health Care System in Palo Alto, California, and
Mark Leach of the University of Louisville. Their research is published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.
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For both believers and non-believers, the researchers found the
effect of certainty on mental health was noticeable but small,
accounting for perhaps one to two percent of the variance in mental
health. This suggests that while belief may act as a “protective factor
of an individual’s mental health,” its ability to serve in that capacity
appears to be overrated.
What’s more, throwing up your hands and declaring the issue of God’s
existence to be unanswerable also has its mental-health advantages:
Self-declared agnostics “showed greater mental health values than
participants who were only somewhat certain about God’s existence or
non-existence.”
That finding affirms the results of
a 2011 study that
concluded only strongly felt religiosity offers the emotional benefits
often attributed to belief in general. As far as our mental health is
concerned, it appears wavering beliefs are more problematic than a lack
of belief.
The benefits of belonging were clearly supported by this study.
“A person’s available social support” was “by far the strongest predictor of mental health in the current analysis,” the researchers write.
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