Is there any evidence to suggest religious practice boosts your health?

Christmas is coming, and even for those whose faith has lapsed, the religious foundations for our celebrations remain. It is a time for reflecting on the year gone by, and looking forward to the next.

The sociologist Émile Durkheim used the term “collective effervescence” to describe the positive mood we feel when we take part in large religious gatherings that bring collective joy and make us sense we belong to a bigger community. We see this at Christmas time.

Research has shown that this spirit of Christmas manifests as a multitude of positive feelings and behaviours that are experienced collectively, including greater altruism, goodwill and generosity. In his recent book, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life, David Robson notes that non-religious routines and rituals also offer structure and predictability and are helpful in managing our mental health.

Before exploring the health benefits of non-religious rituals, is there any evidence to suggest that religious practice is good for our health?

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The ongoing Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (Tilda) at Trinity College Dublin looked at the relationship between religion and mental health in Ireland. The study involved 6,000 people aged 50 or over, who were interviewed at two-year intervals between 2010 and 2016. During the six-year period, the majority of participants reported religion as being important to them – some 86 per cent of women and 76 per cent of men.

The relationship between being religious and mental health was found to be complex. Although those with higher religious attendance had lower depressive symptoms, those who said that religion was very important to them but who did not attend very frequently had worse mental health. Religious attendance was also related to having a bigger social network, which in turn had a positive effect on the mental health of the population. Both men and women who regularly attended religious services had larger social networks than those who were less frequent attenders.

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The Tilda study chimes with research from Harvard University which found that frequently attending religious services was associated with a lower risk of death for women from all causes, as well as specifically from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Using data from the large and long-running Nurses’ Health Study, US researchers found women who frequently attended religious services tended to have fewer depressive symptoms, were less likely to be current smokers and more likely to be married.

Women who attended religious services more than once a week had a 33 per cent lower risk of death during the 16 years of follow-up compared with women who never attended religious services. Women who attended church services more than once a week had a 27 per cent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 21 per cent lower risk of death from cancer compared with women who never attended.

Studying the life-extending benefits of religious practice can offer useful strategies for people – of any faith or none – to live a healthier life, according to Robson. “To build more gratitude into your life, you might keep a diary listing the things that you have appreciated each day and you can make a deliberate habit of thanking the people who have helped you; both strategies have been shown to improve people’s stress responses and to improve overall wellbeing” he says.

“If you have time and resources for greater commitments, you could also take up a voluntary activity for a cause that means a lot to you, a task that may help to boost your sense of purpose and which could also enhance your social life.”

The challenge is to ensure that you build all these behaviours into your routine, so that you perform them with the same regularity and devotion normally reserved for spiritual practices.

In time, you should experience a “collective effervescence” that could make everyday a Christmas Day as you follow your new health regime.

mhouston@irishtimes.com