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Abstract
While religiously‐based explanations have previously been popular in explaining mental illness, support for such models has waned with the increasing prominence of the fields of psychiatry and psychology in developed societies. The question remains, however, whether religious specialists continue to endorse religious explanations for mental disease despite increasing secular and psychological education—possible markers of secularization. In this study, a representative sample of Singaporean Christian clergymen were examined to see whether increasing secular and psychological educational attainment were related to decreasing preferences to explain mental illness with religiously‐based models. Based on the survey results from 213 respondents, psychological and secular educational attainments were not related to endorsement of religiously based causation models for mental illness. Increasing theological education, however, was significantly related to decreased support for religiously‐based models even when conservative theological beliefs were statistically controlled. This study then also points of the importance of understanding the content of education since this may have implication to subsequent beliefs.
Notes
The author acknowledges the help of a grant from the National University of Singapore for data collection and Rev. (Dr.) Danny Goh of Singapore Bible College for his assistance in encouraging clergy participation in this study. Dr. Melvin Yap provided useful suggestions for statistical analysis which were very appreciated.