Past or present spirituality? Predicting mental health outcomes in older adults

ABSTRACT

Although the relationship between current religion/spirituality (R/S) and health outcomes is well-established, we know very little about the extent to which R/S experiences across a lifetime affect those outcomes. This may be due to the limited availability of tools designed to measure lifetime R/S. One measurement tool that attempts to address this need is the Spiritual History Scale in Four Dimensions (SHS-4), but no study has examined the psychometric quality of the SHS-4 since the original development study. A convenience sample of 387 older adults completed the SHS-4 and several measures of current R/S and mental health. A confirmatory factor analysis found the hypothesized four-factor structure to be a reasonably good model fit, and three of the four factors (God Helped, Family History of Religiousness, and Lifetime Religious Social Support) were significantly positively correlated with measures of current R/S. On the other hand, only one SHS-4 factor (Cost of Religiousness) added value to the prediction of depression and anxiety symptoms beyond self-reported physical health and current R/S, suggesting that the length of association with religion may not be as important as current religious activity/commitment for predicting mental health outcomes in older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious/spiritual history
• SHS-4
• confirmatory factor analysis
• psychometrics
• cost of religiousness/spirituality

Disclosure statement

The author reports no conflict of interest regarding this research.

Data availability statement

The data supporting the results presented in this paper were collected and are maintained by the corresponding author.