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Negative religious coping versus spiritual struggles: Moderator or main effect?
1Graduate School of Social Work, Touro University, New York, New York, USA.
Journal of Clinical Psychology
|April 16, 2024
Summary
Negative religious coping, while generally stable, can increase during stress. Higher negative coping is linked to more depressive symptoms, especially during difficult life events, indicating spiritual struggles.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Religious Studies
- Mental Health
Background:
- Previous research links negative religious coping with distress.
- It remains unclear if this reflects generalized spiritual struggles or event-specific vulnerability.
- Coping is often treated as stable, but it likely fluctuates.
Purpose of the Study:
- To longitudinally test models of spiritual struggles and negative coping.
- To examine the relationship between coping and distress over time.
- To differentiate generalized spiritual struggles from event-specific coping vulnerabilities.
Main Methods:
- Secondary analysis of longitudinal data from 397 participants over 3 years.
- Data collected online, assessing life events, negative religious coping, and depressive symptoms six times.
- Linear mixed-effect models used for data analysis.
Main Results:
- Negative religious coping demonstrated stability, with increases during stressful periods.
- Higher average negative coping correlated with increased depressive symptoms, irrespective of life events (main effect).
- Elevated negative coping, particularly during specific times, exacerbated depressive symptoms following negative life events (moderation effect).
Conclusions:
- Findings suggest spiritual struggles and negative coping are distinct phenomena, often merged in prior research.
- This distinction has significant theoretical and research implications.
- Integrating spirituality and religion into mental health treatment may be beneficial.
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