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How does culture affect the relations between religion and mental health? |
How does culture affect the relations between
religion and mental health?
Books and articles on the psychology of religion sometimes appear to
be offering conclusions about the relations between religion and psychological
factors as if these conclusions were culturally universal.
In fact, most studies have been carried out in the USA, in a Christian
culture, and generalisability is doubtful. Occasionally, there have
been studies involving Jewish participants, and, especially recently,
Muslim participants. Sometimes studies may report on European or
Afro-American or other participants.
It is becoming increasingly clear that relations between religion
and psychological factors are not the same in every culture. Thus
Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi’s (1975) classic The Social Psychology of
Religion reviewed many studies of associations between religion and
psychological factors and found that these relations varied in different
social groups – relations between religion and mental health,
for example, varied with social class, gender, religious denomination
and other socio-cultural factors. More recently, Duriez & Hutsebaut
(2000) concluded that (North) American studies tended to
show a positive relationship between religion and prejudice, whereas
in the Low Countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg)
the relationship tends to be negative. Other examples could be
given. But what about the relationships between culture and mental
health?
Much has been written about culture and mental health. Important
themes include:
Attention to the question whether there are variations between
cultures in the prevalence and incidence of different psychiatric
disorders, and if so why.
The description of psychiatric conditions which may be culturespecific.
The understanding of the interpretive framework used in different
cultures for the understanding of mental illness.
In addressing these and other questions, cultural and social psychiatrists
and medical anthropologists very seldom consider religious
factors separately from cultural factors. The focus is typically on the
expression of psychiatric disorder in a particular cultural context,
and religious aspects are part and parcel of that cultural context.
Littlewood & Lipsedge (1989) note that religion may play a special
role in the maintenance and development of cultural norms:
‘the implicit goals of social conformity are frequently couched in
the form of religious injunctions which are beyond question’. But
in most studies of culture and mental health, religious factors are
treated as part of the cultural package.
So there seem to be discipline-specific biases in the way the interactions
between culture, religion and mental health have been studied.
For (social) psychologists, these are three factors, often measured
psychometrically, and their associations studied statistically,
with culture and religion interacting or moderating each other’s
effects on mental health and other psychological factors. For (social
and cultural) psychiatrists, religion is firmly embedded in culture,
and the method of studying the relations between culture and mental
health often use descriptive case material, or adopt a phenomenological
or post-modernist stance towards understanding the perspectives
of the members of the culture under study. Of course, psychologists
may use descriptive material and adopt a phenomenological
approach, and psychiatrists may use measurement, quantification
and the study of the statistical association between factors. But the
approaches of social psychologists and of social/cultural psychiatry
can be broadly contrasted.
