Person:

Rosmarin, David

Numerous studies have underscored the importance of religious coping in psychological health and illness; however, the majority of research in this area has been conducted with Christian samples and knowledge about other religious groups is lacking. Although recent investigations have developed scales to measure religious coping among Hindus and Muslims, the potential for future research in Jewish populations remains limited as no measures of religious coping have been validated in the general Jewish community. This two-part study reports on the development and validation of the 16-item Jewish Religious Coping Scale (JCOPE). In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis identified two factors reflecting positive and negative religious coping strategies, and the concurrent validity for the measure was evaluated by examining correlations with indices of Jewish beliefs and practices. In Study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified the JCOPE’s 2-factor structure, and the scale’s incremental validity was evaluated by examining Jewish religious coping as a predictor of psychological distress over and above significant covariates. Results suggest that the JCOPE has good psychometric properties, and that religious coping is a significant predictor of psychological distress among Jews.

Although spirituality and religion play a role in the lives of many North Americans, the relationship of these variables to symptoms of affective disorders has not been rigorously studied. The authors, therefore, evaluated the extent to which religious factors predicted symptoms of distress in a large community sample of 354 individuals (120 Christian and 234 Jewish). Results indicated that religious denomination was a poor predictor of distress. However, general religiousness (e.g. importance of religion), religious practices (e.g. frequency of prayer), and positive religious core beliefs predicted lower levels of worry, trait anxiety, and depressive symptoms, whereas negative religious core beliefs predicted increased symptoms. These variables accounted for a small but significant portion of the variance in reported symptoms after controlling for covariates. These findings are taken to indicate that religion is an important factor to consider when evaluating and treating distress in religious individuals. Implications for clinical practice of empirically supported treatments with religious individuals are explored.

Although spirituality and religion are generally associated with higher levels of physical and mental well-being, spiritual struggles, which involve tension in regard to spiritual issues, have been identified as a risk factor for poorer physical and mental health, especially among individuals with greater levels of personal religiousness. However, studies in this area have utilized predominantly Christian samples and the importance of spiritual struggles to Jews is not known. We proposed and tested two competing models in an adult Jewish community sample: (a) the Universal Effects model in which spiritual struggles were proposed to be associated with decreased levels of physical/mental health, and more problematic for more religious Jews, and (b) the Differential Effects model in which spiritual struggles were proposed to be generally unrelated to the physical/mental health of Jews, and even less impactful on religious Jews. We found some support for both models. Spiritual struggles were modestly associated with lower levels of physical/mental health in the sample as a whole, even after controlling for demographic covariates. However, at the highest levels of spiritual struggle, Orthodox Jews exhibited an increase in physical and mental health whereas non-Orthodox Jews’ health continued to decrease.

Although social scientists have convincingly demonstrated relationships between religious beliefs/practices and mental health, almost none of the empirical findings or related theory apply specifically to Jews. To address this limitation, we investigated the role of Jewish religiousness in anxiety, depression, and happiness, in a large Jewish community sample (n 1⁄4 565). Several facets of global Jewish religiousness were examined, as well as a theoretically based Jewish religious variable, trust in God. A self-report measure of trust in God was created, and factor analyses yielded two reliable and valid subscales: trust in God and mistrust in God. Contrary to our hypotheses, global Jewish religiousness was on the whole unrelated to mental-health functioning. As expected, higher levels of trust in God were associated with less anxiety and depression, and greater personal happiness, whereas inverse associations emerged for the unanticipated but robust mistrust subscale.

Culture may particularly influence community attitudes towards mental illness, when the illness itself is shaped by a cultural context. To explore the influence of culture-specific, religious symptoms on Orthodox Jewish community attitudes, the authors compared the attitudes of 169 Orthodox Jews, who randomly viewed one of two vignettes describing either religious or nonreligious obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Results indicate that though participants were equally likely to perceive both vignettes as mental illness, they were less likely to endorse psychological/medical explanatory models and help-seeking, and conversely more likely to endorse social–religious explanations, religious help-seeking, and stigma in relation to religious OCD. Nevertheless, psychological/medical models and help-seeking were more strongly endorsed for both religious and nonreligious OCD. Beyond implications for Orthodox Jewish community actions, these findings suggest that attitudes towards mental illness may depend on how symptoms relate to community culture.