http://www.apa.org/releases/religion.html
ANALYSIS OF STUDIES SHOWS THAT RELIGIOUS
INVOLVEMENT MAY BE A FACTOR IN LIVING A LONG LIFE
Forty-Two Studies, Nearly 126,000 People Were Examined
Washington - Nearly 96 percent of Americans believe in God or
in some universal spirit, according to a 1995 Gallup poll. Maybe
people are more health conscious than previously thought.
Regular attendance at one's church, synagogue, mosque or
Buddhist monastery is related to longer life, according to a
meta-analysis of 42 studies that examined 125,826 people
which is reported in the current issue of Health Psychology
published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
"The odds of survival for people who scored higher on
measures of public and private religious involvement were 29
percent higher than those people who scored lower on such
measures," said psychologist and lead author Michael E.
McCullough, Ph.D., of the National Institute for Healthcare
Research. Public religious involvement is defined by how
frequently a person attends church or temple, whether a person
is a member of a religious organization (a religious kibbutz) or
how much spare time a person spends in church or temple
activities. Private religious involvement includes measures
such as self-rated religiousness, frequency of private prayer
and use of religion as a coping resource.
Follow-up results indicated that involvement in public religious
activity was particularly important in predicting mortality,
according to the study. This held true for nearly all the studies
individually but was certainly true for the entire group of studies
as a whole.
Being involved in religion seems to explain a small part of why
some people live longer than others, said the authors, but other
reasons for longevity include a person's race, age, education,
social support and physical health. "Moreover, results seemed
to indicate that those people with a high level of religious
involvement were also less obese. In part, the effects of
religious involvement on physical health variables like obesity
appear to explain why religious involvement predicts reduced
risk of mortality," said Dr. McCullough.
The health benefits of being religious (more publicly than
privately) may also be partially due to the social support and
friendship making derived from frequent attendance at religious
services, according to the authors.
The authors suggest that people who are actively religious also
tend to take better care of themselves in several health areas
and this may account for their longevity status. Whatever the
reasons for the association of religious involvement with
increased life expectancy, Dr. McCullough says, "this is a
phenomenon that deserves a lot more research attention than
it has traditionally received."