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Cited by 363Religion, Spirituality, and PsychologySuicide and Self-Harm StudiesReligion and Society Interactions

Association Between Religious Service Attendance and Lower Suicide Rates Among US Women

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VanderWeele, Tyler J., Li, Shanshan, Tsai, Alexander C., Kawachi, Ichiro·2016·JAMA Psychiatry
DOI 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.1243PMC PMC7228478
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Abstract

IMPORTANCE: Previous studies have linked suicide risk with religious participation, but the majority have used ecologic, cross-sectional, or case-control data. OBJECTIVE: To examine the longitudinal association between religious service attendance and suicide and the joint associations of suicide with service attendance and religious affiliation. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: We evaluated associations between religious service attendance and suicide from 1996 through June 2010 in a large, long-term prospective cohort, the Nurses' Health Study, in an analysis that included 89 708 women. Religious service attendance was self-reported in 1992 and 1996. Data analysis was conducted from 1996 through 2010. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to examine the association between religious service attendance and suicide, adjusting for demographic covariates, lifestyle factors, medical history, depressive symptoms, and social integration measures. We performed sensitivity analyses to examine the influence of unmeasured confounding. RESULTS: Among 89 708 women aged 30 to 55 years who participated in the Nurses' Health Study, attendance at religious services once per week or more was associated with an approximately 5-fold lower rate of suicide compared with never attending religious services (hazard ratio, 0.16; 95% CI, 0.06-0.46). Service attendance once or more per week vs less frequent attendance was associated with a hazard ratio of 0.05 (95% CI, 0.006-0.48) for Catholics but only 0.34 (95% CI, 0.10-1.10) for Protestants (P = .05 for heterogeneity). Results were robust in sensitivity analysis and to exclusions of persons who were previously depressed or had a history of cancer or cardiovascular disease. There was evidence that social integration, depressive symptoms, and alcohol consumption partially mediated the association among those occasionally attending services, but not for those attending frequently. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this cohort of US women, frequent religious service attendance was associated with a significantly lower rate of suicide.

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  • R/S has even greater protective effects regarding substance use disorders and suicide risk.

    “and even greater protective effects regarding substance use disorders10 and suicide risk.11,12”

    From Brazilian Psychiatric Association guidelines on the integration of spirituality into mental health clinical practice: Part 1. Spiritual history and differential diagnosis (2023) · cites this paper as [12]

    The Results report that US women attending religious services at least weekly had a substantially lower suicide rate than women who never attended (adjusted HR=0.16). The study is observational and measures service attendance, so it does not establish a causal protective effect of religion or spirituality generally, or extend the finding beyond the women studied. The substance-use-disorder clause has a separate citation and is not attributed to this source. (LLM, conf=0.82)

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1 of the 35 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [6]Durkheim E Suicide: a study in sociology. (1st Free Press paperback ed.) New York: Free Press 1966.
  2. [29]Church Catholic. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Libreria Editrice Vaticana Loyola University Press, Vatican City: Chicago, Ill. 2 Ed 2000.
  3. [30]Selvin HC. Durkheim’s Suicide: Further Thoughts on a Methodological Classic. Émile Durkheim, Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn 1965, pp 113– 136.

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Authors
VanderWeele, T. J., Li, S., Tsai, A. C., & Kawachi, I.
Affiliations
Harvard University (US)
Corresponding author
VanderWeele, Tyler J.
ORCID
Venue
JAMA Psychiatry
Publisher
American Medical Association (AMA)
Published
2016-08-01
Volume
73
Issue
8
Pages
845
ISSN
2168-622X (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.1243
PMC
PMC7228478
OpenAlex
W2461556580
Cited by
363
References
35
Citations by year
2026: 20 · 2025: 53 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 69 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 41 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 8
FWCI
35.67
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • JAMA Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Cancer Institute (UM1CA186107)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Religion and Society Interactions
Keywords
religious service attendance, suicide, religious affiliation, women, Catholicism, Protestantism, social integration, depressive symptoms, alcohol consumption, suicide risk factors, Nurses' Health Study
MeSH terms
Suicide Prevention, Adult, Cause of Death, Female, Health Surveys, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Middle Aged, Prospective Studies, Religion and Psychology, Risk, Sex Factors, Statistics as Topic, Suicide, United States, Cohort Studies, Proportional Hazards Models, Case-Control Studies

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