Religious faith in society may do more than provide spiritual comfort and moral guidance; it could also help protect against anxiety disorders, according to a recent study published in Developmental Science.
The research published in March explored if there were links between what societies value — such as independence and community — and anxiety disorder rates among children and adolescents over three decades.
The study by Leonard Konstantin Kulisch, Ana Lorena Domínguez Rojas, Silvia Schneider, and Babett Voigt analyzed preexisting records and data during the years 1989 to 2022 from the World Value Survey, Global Burden of Disease study, Human Development Report, and Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study.
The research found an emphasis on independence was linked to higher anxiety rates in "WEIRD" (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) nations, while a greater emphasis on religious faith and interdependence correlated with less anxiety disorders globally.
It also found that the importance of religious faith in socialization, and its link to interdependence, was associated with fewer anxiety disorders across 70 of the countries examined.
The study did not compare religious versus nonreligious people or compare specific countries.
While the effect sizes were small, it did find that "in countries where emphasis on religious faith in childrearing declined, youth anxiety rose," Brandon Vaidyanathan, professor of sociology at The Catholic University of America, told EWTN News.
Country-based disparities
In WEIRD nations, the societies that have norms that are oriented toward independence were associated with more anxiety disorders, but the analyses found no significant association among the non-WEIRD countries.
In "developing societies [a] shift toward independence accompanies gains in growth and quality of life that may offset its psychological costs, but in already developed societies, it may only intensify competition and achievement-pressure," Vaidyanathan explained.
"The difference between WEIRD and non-WEIRD societies on the independence finding is quite interesting, and the authors suggest that it is stage-dependent," Vaidyanathan said.
"But religion is universal in providing goods that do not depend on development stage" including "belonging, order, meaning, purpose, routine."
Family versus society predictors
The study reports that religious socialization may serve as "a protective factor" against anxiety issues in children and adolescents, which "is at the communal level much more than the individual level," Vaidyanathan said.
So much so that the U.S. data suggested the society's religious norms predicted children's anxiety better than the mother's own beliefs.
"The religiosity of the surrounding social environment was a stronger predictor of children's anxiety level than the family's own faith, suggesting the protection comes from the society more than family," Vaidyanathan said.
The global protective factor was not communal values in general but religious faith specifically, which Vaidyanathan called "textbook sociology" of religion.
"Since Durkheim, sociologists have shown that integration into [a] shared moral community buffers individuals from anomie" or "normlessness," he said.
"Where the community has clear norms, attachments, obligations, limits … the individual doesn't have to shoulder the burden of ordering life themselves —which is where anxiety comes in."
"That's why the protection is at the group level more than individual or family level, and that is what gets eroded in a secularized society," he said.
Vaidyanathan also pointed to Peter Berger, a sociologist and Protestant theologian who coined the term "plausibility structures," which are the social, cultural, and institutional environments that make certain values or religious beliefs seem believable and normal to a group of people.
Berger's "famous concept of 'plausibility structures' helps us understand that a religious framework reduces anxiety, only while the surrounding society keeps it plausible — when the surrounding community keeps talking and living as if it were true."
"When that fails, religion becomes one option among many and even a devout household's commitment to their faith is not enough to shield a child in that society. So this is why community norms [or] religiosity matters much more than family belief," Vaidyanathan said.
