Religious Support "Safe for Consumption"

A major U.S. university medical center banned chaplains from visiting patients on the hospital psychiatry unit, possibly out of concern that such a visit might hamper patients' recovery. But a recent research review found "religious approaches to counseling were no less effective than the standard approaches to counseling."

Summarizing the five studies that examined recovery from depression using the standard approach to counseling and a religious approach to counseling, Dr. Michael McCullough stated that in those studies "noempirical basis exists for withholding such religion-accommodative treatment from depressed religious clients who desire such a treatment approach."

Reviewed in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, all five studies randomly assigned depressed clients to one of two treatments for an equal time period. One treatment included religious support and positive religious thoughts and imagery for those who desired it, and the other did not. Depression levels of all 111 people participating in the five studies were measured one week after the conclusion of their treatments.

At the one week follow-up, clients receiving counseling with religious content showed slightly more improvement compared to the standard treatment, but scores were not significantly different. Yet, the follow-up time was short. "It would be unfortunate if the present results were interpreted as the last word in evaluating the efficacy of religious approaches to counseling," commented Dr. McCullough, director of research at the National Institute for Healthcare Research. Studies with longer follow-up periods and with more participants are needed.

Over a longer time frame, studying whether religious counseling helped prevent clients from relapsing into another episode of depression is worth investigating, he noted. For instance, another study found that depressed persons whose religious faith was a highly central, internalized focus in their lives were more likely to recover from depression within a year than were depressed people with lower intrinsic religious scores. Studying whether adding religious components makes a difference in treating a wider variety of disorders like anxiety, anger, and marital and family problems also deserves attention, he suggested.

Also, in an era of competition for the healthcare dollar, treatment satisfaction might rise for religious clients in the U.S., a country where 60 percent note that religion is "important" or "very important" to them, according to Gallup polls.

"For some clients, particularly very religious Christian clients, religion- accommodative approaches to counseling could be, quite literally, the treatment of choice," Dr. McCullough commented. "Religious approaches to counseling can be as effective as standard approaches to counseling depressed persons."

Reference: McCullough, Michael E. (1999). "Research on Religion-Accommodative Counseling: Review and Meta-Analysis," Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 1-7.