“Blessed are the Nations with High Levels of Schizophrenia”: National Level Schizophrenia Prevalence and Its Relationship with National Levels of Religiosity

Schizophrenia is correlated with religious delusions but, heretofore, the relationship between schizophrenia prevalence and religiosity has not been explored at the national level. Examining this relationship, we find that national level schizophrenia prevalence is correlated with national level religiosity and strongly negatively correlated with national level atheism across 125 countries. When controlling for cognitive performance and economic development in multiple regression analyses, the proportion of the variance explained was 2.9% (p < .005) for Religiousness and 5.1% for Atheism (p < .00005). Alternative causal interpretations of this association are discussed.