Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes

Hatta writes "According to researchers from Harvard Medical School, belief in god is correlated with improved outcomes of treatment for depression. Quoting: 'In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without. "Belief was associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm," says David H. Rosmarin, Ph.D., an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.' This raises interesting questions. Does this support the concept of depressive realism? If the association is found to be causal, would it be ethical for a psychiatrist to prescribe religion?"

Comments

Re:Does screaming OH GOD during sex

[Farmer Tim]

Yes, unless your partner is both the religious and jealous type (Joseph was OK with it, apparently).

Re:This is here, because?

[grantspassalan]

Any story where God is mentioned, whether science or not is involved, will be controversial and usually gathers more comments not only on Slashdot, but on many other websites comment pages. Many people refuse to discuss religion or politics because they shun controversy. Especially on /. anybody who professes to believe there is a God is usually modded down by those who not just disbelieve there is a God, but are adamant about it. There seem to be more adamant, activist atheists nowadays than there used to be. I happen to believe that there is a God and I will probably be modded into oblivion just for saying so. The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.

Re:Not religion, but purpose

[Ol Olsoc]

The point made is that most Religions believe that you choose the road you walk on. If you take the wrong path, you don't end up at your desired location. The Bible, Torah, Koran, etc.. is the map with a road clearly marked. It should be rather obvious that if God didn't want you to get to the right place, there would be no map.

Why obvious? Why different paths? Why would a kind and loving God make people with free will, knowing surely that he was going to destroy his handiwork? Why wouldn't a failure of even one person to get to heaven be a failure on God's part? Why would a kind and loving God allow his handiwork to be killed maimed tortured along the way, just so his subjects could have free will? Why would this God create a system in which all of the religions make God up as they see fit, including attempted destruction of those who hold a different God like they want God to be. No, it really isn't obvious. It seems like a very very flawed system, and that any God that put this system together was not much of a God.

Maybe you should try to learn something about Religions before talking bad about them?

Maybe you should try beling less smug. When Jesus was a boy visiting the temple, you probably would have told him to shut up too.

I'm not fond of what many Religions teach, but I've become well educated in numerous theologies so that I can intelligently discuss them.

And you are just like a lot of other self righteous assholes who would denegrate other people, and place themselves as superior becasue they know sooo much. I mean that very respectfully.