Research on the relationship between religious commitment and psychopamology has produced mixed findings. In a recent meta-analysis, Bergin (1983) found mat 23% of the studies reported a negative relationship, 47% reported a positive relationship, and 30% reported no relationship at all between religion and mental health. Based on our review of more than 200 studies, we have discovered four additional trends: (a) Most studies linking religious commitment to psychopathology have employed mental health measures that we have called “soft variables,” that is, paper-and-pencil personality tests which attempt to measure theoretical constructs. In contrast, most of the research linking religion to positive mental health is on “hard variables,” that is, “real life” behavioral events which can be reliably ob-served and measured and which are unambiguous in their significance. (b) Low levels of religiosity are most often associated with disorders related to undercontrol of impulses, whereas high levels of religiosi...

Religious Commitment and Mental Health: A Review of the Empirical Literature:

The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide proposes that suicidal behavior is so frightening that in order for an individual to engage in suicidal behavior, desire for suicide must be accompanied by the capability to do so. The capability for suicide is characterized by both a sense of fearlessness about death and elevated physiological pain tolerance. The primary aim of the current project was to reevaluate and revise the Acquired Capability for Suicide Scale (ACSS; Van Orden, Witte, Gordon, Bender, & Joiner, 2008) and offer a revision to the scale. Expert review of the scale items resulted in retaining 7 items assessing fearlessness about death. The recommendation is made to refer to the revised scale as the ACSS-Fearlessness About Death (ACSS-FAD) to reflect its content more specifically. A model with the 7 retained items provided good fit to the data across 3 independent samples of young adults. Multiple-group analyses examining measurement invariance across men and women found that the latent structure of the scale is comparable across gender. Data are also presented demonstrating convergent and discriminant validity for the scale in young adults and an inpatient psychiatric sample. Findings support the viability of the ACSS-FAD, indicating the scale has a replicable factor structure that generalizes across males and females and is substantively related to the construct of fearlessness about death. Taken together, the present work extends knowledge of the psychometrics of the ACSS-FAD in particular and the nature of fearlessness about death in general.

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Fearlessness about death: the psychometric properties and construct validity of the revision to the acquired capability for suicide scale.

Religious commitment, mental health, and prosocial behavior: A review of the empirical literature.

The inner experience of spiritual and religious feelings is an integral part of the everyday lives of many individuals. For over 100 years the role of religion as a deterrent to suicidal behavior has been studied in various disciplines. We attempt to systematize the existing literature investigating the relationship between religion/spirituality and suicide in this paper. After an overview of the attitudes of the dominant religions (e.g., Catholicism, Islam, and Buddhism) toward suicide, the three main theories that have speculated regarding the link between religion and suicide are presented: “integration theory” (Durkheim, 1897/1997), “religious commitment theory” (Stack, 1983a; Stark, 1983), and “network theory” (Pescosolido & Georgianna, 1989). Subsequent to this theoretical introduction, we report on studies on religion/spirituality keeping the suicidal path as a reference: from suicidal ideation to nonlethal suicidal behavior to lethal suicidal behavior. Studies presenting indications of religious beliefs as a possible risk factor for suicidal behavior are also presented. The last section reviews possible intervention strategies for suicidal patients and suicide survivors. Indications for future research, such as more studies on nonreligious forms of spirituality and the use of qualitative methodology to achieve a better and deeper understanding of the spiritual dimension of suicidal behavior and treatment, are offered.

Religion and spirituality along the suicidal path.

The objective of this study was to simplify understandings of relationships between multidimensional elements of the fear of death and dying with a unidimensional construct of intrinsic religiosity. A total of 346 individuals who ranged in age from 18 to 88 completed a death anxiety scale and a measure of intrinsic religious motivation. Respondents who were older and who were higher in intrinsic religiosity were significantly lower in death anxiety. Differing constructions of death and dying are examined.

Meanings of death and intrinsic religiosity.

College students from four different institutions were asked to report their attitudes toward suicide, their anxiety about death, the degree of their religiosity, the substance of their religious beliefs, and the seriousness with which they had considered suicide. The more supportive students were about the right of people in general to commit suicide and the more situations they felt would justify their own suicide, the more anxious they felt about death, the less strongly they were committed to a religion, and the more seriously they had thought about committing suicide. A discussion about the ramifications of these results for the college campus is included.

Julianne D. Minear

Papers

The Correlations of Attitudes toward Suicide with Death Anxiety, Religiosity, and Personal Closeness to Suicide: