Religious involvement in major depression: protective or risky behavior? The relevance of bipolar spectrum

Religiosity has been reported to be inversely related to depression and to suicide as well, but there is a lack of studies on its impact on bipolar disorder and especially, on depressed patients belonging to the bipolar spectrum.

As part of the EPIDEP National Multisite French Study of 493 consecutive DSM-IV major depressive patients evaluated in at least two semi-structured interviews 1 month apart, 234 (55.2%) could be classified as with high religious involvement (HRI), and 190 (44.8%) as with low religious involvement (LRI), on the basis of their ratings on the Duke Religious Index (DRI).

Compared to LRI, HRI patients did not differ with respect to their religious affiliation but had a later age at onset of their affective illness with more hospitalizations, suicide attempts, associated hypomanic features, switches under antidepressant treatment, prescription of tricyclics, comorbid obsessive compulsive disorder, and family history of affective disorder in first-degree relatives. The following independent variables were associated with religious involvement: age, depressive temperament, mixed polarity of first episode, and chronic depression. The clinical picture of depressive patients with HRI was evocative of chronic mixed depressive episodes described in bipolar III patients within the spectrum of bipolar disorders.

Retrospective design, recall bias, lack of sample homogeneity, no assessment of potential protective and risk factors, and not representative for all religious affiliations.

In depressive patients belonging to the bipolar spectrum, high religious involvement associated with mixed features may increase the risk of suicidal behavior, despite the existence of religious affiliation.