The Sacred and Stressed: Testing a Model of Clergy Health

In many ways, clergy and religious leaders are an ignored, yet high-risk population. A clergy member unable to cope with challenges in his or her own life may be ineffective at helping church members to cope with their stress. In the present study, we developed and tested an operational model of clergy holistic health, including occupational demands, and personal and job-related resources. Data were collected from clergy (N = 418) and analyzed using correlational and regression-based techniques. Results from the present study provide support for the demands-control-support model (Johnson and Hall in Am J Public Health 78(10):1336-1342, 1988). Specifically, our findings suggest that clergy mental health may be improved by (a) an increase in the work-related social support needed to take advantage of job control followed by (b) an increase in job control. Furthermore, the present findings expand on previous research by identifying spiritual well-being as an important outcome that may be impacted by job-related demands. The present findings also underscore the value of contextualized or occupation-specific measures, given the stronger correlations that were observed between the occupation-specific measure of perceived job demands than the general measure of perceived job demands.