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Sad Eyes, Crooked Crosses: Religious Struggles, Psychological Distress and the Mediating Role of Psychosocial
Terrence D Hill1, Liwen Zeng2, Simone Rambotti3
1Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX, 78249-1644, USA. terrence.hill@utsa.edu.
Abstract:
In this paper, we employed data from the 2011 Miami-Dade Health Survey (n = 444) to formally test whether the association between religious struggles and psychological distress is mediated by psychosocial resources. We found that religious struggles were associated with lower levels of social support, self-esteem, the sense of control, and self-control. We also observed that religious struggles were associated with higher levels of non-specific emotional distress, depression, and anxiety, but not somatization. Our mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of religious struggles on emotional distress (not somatization) through social support, self-esteem, and the sense of control, but not self-control.
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