Which Religious Communities Have The Largest Impact on Depression Rates?

Jaclyn Trotta and Myrna Hanna

IntroductionFor countless years, scientific studies and

research projects have been exploring the impact religion has on health, specifically mental stability. It has been proven that many people find comfort in certain religious practices and rituals, releasing endorphins from the body, therefore decreasing stress levels. Religious communities all over the United States practice different rituals and belief systems, and therefore different religions have varying effects on improvement in mental health. For our study, we want to specifically test the impact that different, major, organized religions have on people of religious backgrounds who suffer from depression

MethodsFor our study we are researching

different major religions and the rate of depression associated with each religion, in addition to the impact that each community has had on curing depression. We are finding our information from surveys that have been previously conducted, databases such as the American Psychological Association, PubMed, CSI Proxy, the CCNY library database, and databases cited in peer-reviewed journal articles of our topic. Finally, we plan on creating a meta-analysis for our research by first creating a list of possible sources of information, then filtering our information for sources that provide us with only relevant information. After we will abstract our data by creating a chart of the key points from each source, and analyze the data statistically. Finally, we will create a summary of our estimates with a clear conclusion, supported by the data from our analysis.

DataBased on the databases we have researched, we have

compiled the following data for our project:

Results

In our results, we have found that there is no one particular religion affiliation that has the largest impact on depression rates. All of the percentages are somewhat

similar and overall show no direct correlation.Refreneces

• http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.csi.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=a83f3f62-6cdf-4645-ac06-2421de7e282c%40sessionmgr14&hid=115

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1702510/table/tbl1/• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3285738/table/T2• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3285738/table/T3/• http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.csi.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=a8

3f3f62-6cdf-4645-ac06-2421de7e282c%40sessionmgr14&hid• http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.csi.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=a

83f3f62-6cdf-4645-ac06-2421de7e282c%40sessionmgr14&hid=3• http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.csi.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=a

83f3f62-6cdf-4645-ac06-2421de7e282c%40sessionmgr14&hid=115

Discussion/ConclusionSince there is no direct

correlation between the different religions and their depression rates, we have come to the conclusion that religion affiliation does not directly affect depression. Although religion in general has been previously proven to be a factor in decreasing depression rates, there is not one particular religion that does it better than another religion. The reason that we believe that there is not one particular religion that has a greater impact on lowering depression rates is due to the fact they all believe in supreme beings and an afterlife. Even though there are many different rituals and other beliefs involved in the various religions, they all are based on the idea of a god and achieving paradise. We were hoping to correlate a religion’s unique belief and ritual system with a lower depression rate. However, there is not enough information public to get a definite answer as of now.

AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank our our

professors from our campuses, Professor Florette Cohen and Professor Glen Milstein, as well as our Seminar III professor Charles Liu for their support and guidance throughout the project