Religious Coping Shrinks Depression but Not Death Rates for Acutely Ill

A long-term study of more than 1,000 seriously ill hospitalized men found that those who most strongly relied on their religious faith to cope had lower rates of depression and a wider network of supportive friends, yet they lived no longer than less religious patients.

"Dependence on a strong personal religious faith, while not adding years to life, certainly may add life to years," concluded the researchers in this study, which followed seriously ill men for nine years after admission to a Veterans Administration hospital in Durham, NC.

About 67 percent of all these patients died within the nine years whether they drew on their religious faith for strength or comfort to a great degree, somewhat or not at all. About one fifth of these hospitalized patients indicated that "religion was the most important coping factor that kept them going," the researchers noted.

The finding that strong religious coping did not result in longer lives differed from some earlier research. The authors cited other studies showing higher survival rates among heart surgery patients who drew strength from their religious faith, as well as lower rates of earlier death among elderly people with poor health still living at home who found strength or comfort from their religion.

Yet, the fact that many of these hospitalized men were already near death at the start of the study may partly explain why no differences were found in survival rates among the strong religious copers and others, the researchers suggested.

"Age and physical illness may simply have overwhelmed the effects of religious coping and other psychosocial predictors of mortality," they stated. "Neither marital status, education, income level, social support, nor depression had any effect on survival, despite the fact they are well known psychosocial predictors of mortality in community dwelling populations," the researchers added.

Those most likely to die during the nine years were the older patients with cancer or respiratory disease. In contrast, patients with a primary diagnosis of heart disease were more likely to survive, the researchers found.

Also, many of these patients "may have sought comfort in religion as they became sicker and required acute hospitalization," the researchers noted. Thus, a link between nearness to death and religious coping arose, "canceling out any protective effect that long-term or life-long religious devotion may have afforded," they suggested. Future studies on the effects of religious coping may need to focus on people in the community who are younger and less ill, they suggested.

"Although religious coping did not prolong these hospitalized men's lives, the lower rates of depression and higher social support among these men and in studies of other patients has shown that dependence on religious faith during physical illness and hospitalization may help to make life more enjoyable during the time that remains," said Dr. David B. Larson, president of the National Institute for Healthcare Research.

Reference: Koenig, Harold G., Larson, David B., Hays, Judith C., McCullough, Michael E., George, Linda K., Branch, Patricia S., Meador, Keith G., Kuchibhatla, Maragatha. "Religon and the Survival of 1010 Hospitalized Veterans," Journal of Religion and Health 1999; 37(1): 15-29.