Religious Maturity and Psychological Distress Among Older Christian Women

Abstract

Among the elderly, research has shown a relation between stressful life events and greater psychological distress. This distress has been shown to be mediated, however, by numerous coping factors. There is moderate support in the literature for suggesting that religion is one of those factors that function to lower distress as persons age. Although previous research has surveyed religious activity, religious beliefs, and religious importance, it has not assessed whether a comprehensive measure of maturity in the practice of religion would be systematically related to lower distress among aging religious persons. Utilizing an interview schedule based on Pruyser's (1976) categories assessing the application of Christian beliefs to daily life, answers interpreted along a continuum from immature to mature in a sample of elderly Protestant women were compared to several measures of distress. These data were subjected to multiple regression analysis. Although, as expected, more stressful life events were the strongest predictors of current psychological distress, religious maturity tempered this relation even after intelligence, education, income, and age had been partialled out. Thus, differences in religious maturity were found to be related negatively to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Hathaway & McKinley, 1982) subscale of Depression, r = -.20, and the research scales of Anxiety (Dahlstrom & Welsh, 1960), r = -. 12, and Psychological Distress (McLachlan, 1977), r = -.19. If these results are generalized, religious assessments that go beyond mere questions of beliefs and activity to comprehensive surveys of religious maturity, or functioning faith, would help to clarify some of the conflicting studies in the literature on adjustment among the aging. There is a need to see if these results can be replicated with men as well as on more representative and larger samples.