Religion and Physical Health

When the question "Is religion good for your health?" comes up, most of us are particularly interested in religion's effects on physical health. If the religiously involved person is more satisfied with life, less depressed, and less anxious, do these positive effects on mental health also translate into better physical health and longer life? When I first began searching medical literature for studies on religion and mental health, I could locate only a few studies. Just about that time, Dr. Jeffrey Levin was doing an exhaustive search of the broader topic of religion and physical health. He found over 200 studies that had examined some aspect of this topic. Dr. Levin had a difficult time getting his paper published because of the negative and sometimes degrading attitude of medical journal editors. He finally published it in a pastoral care journal that most medical and psychiatric researchers do not read, ¹ and so this information remained hidden for some time. The vast majority of studies Dr. Levin referred to in his review examined associations between religious affiliation and different physical illnesses. Associations were usually explained on the basis of diet or other health practices. Little attention, however, was paid by researchers in these studies to the effects of religiousness per se (our primary interest here) on health.