Religious Beliefs About Mental Illness Influence Social Support Preferences

Abstract

Research demonstrates that social support facilitates recovery from a mental illness. Stigma negatively impacts the social support available to persons with mental illness (PWMIs). We investigated how religious beliefs about mental illness influenced the types of social support individuals would be willing to give PWMIs. Christian participants indicated their denominational affiliation and their religious beliefs about mental illness. We then asked participants to imagine a situation in which their friend had depression. Participants indicated their willingness to give secular and spiritual social support (e.g., secular: recommending medication; spiritual: recommending prayer). Christians’ beliefs that mental illness results from immorality/sinfulness and that mental illnesses have spiritual causes/treatments both predicted preference for giving spiritual social support. Evangelical Christians endorsed more beliefs that mental illnesses have spiritual causes/treatments than Mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians, and they endorsed more preference for giving spiritual social support than Roman Catholic Christians.

KEYWORDS:

• mental illness
• religious beliefs
• social support
• stigma

Notes

There was an unrelated scenario experiment at the beginning of the pilot packets. This manipulation had no significant effects (ps > .17) on the relevant measures in this article and thus will not be discussed further.

We revised two of the items from the original published scale because previous participants suggested the original wording was awkward. The item “A person’s relationship with God has nothing to do with their suffering from a mental illness.” was revised to “A person suffering from a mental illness has a poor relationship with God.” The item “Prayer is not the only ways to fix a mental illness.” was revised to “Prayer is the only way to truly fix a mental illness.”