Religious Doubt And Mental Health Essay

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Religious doubt can be defined to be a notion of confusion towards the understanding of practiced religions, religious teachings and beliefs. This notion is a common occurrence felt by many different people during their lifespan. A lot of organized religions admire the idea of doubt within an individual's journey toward their inner truth. Religions such as Unitarian Universalism and Christianity are prime examples of organized religions that view the idea of religious doubt as an essential component within an individual's journey. There is a range of research that shows that all effects of religious doubt are not positive. Connections between mental health issues, aging, and religious doubt have been made over the years. Seeing that most …show more content…

For example, the use of a sample selection and a questionnaire was both used in order to find the results of this experiment. A total of 1,895 individuals were participants within this sample survey (Galek, Krause, Ellison, Kudler, & Flannelly, 2007). The questionnaire consisted of 135 items that helped correlate a range of data, that includes mental health, demographic traits and a range of religions. The results of this experiment lead to similar data that was found previously, associating religious doubt and a decrease in mental health problems over a series of ages. The experiment that is discussed within this article is different from previous findings because of the variety of mental health areas that were targeted within the group of participants. Within this sample of people, all from different regions and areas of the nation, everyone was religiously sound and spiritually experienced. The areas of mental health that was examined within this experiment includes depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety and interpersonal sensitivity. Galek et al. (2007) stated that as age increases both religious doubt and its deleterious net effects on psychopathology

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