Religiosity, Psychological Distress, and Well-Being: Evaluating Familial Confounding With Multicohort Sibling Data

Several studies have associated religiosity with better mental health, but these studies have only partially addressed the problem of confounding. The present study pooled data from multiple cohort studies with siblings to examine whether associations between religiosity and mental health are confounded by familial factors (i.e., shared family background and siblings’ shared genetics). Data were collected between 1982 and 2017. Mental health was assessed with self-reported psychological distress (including depressive symptoms) and psychological well-being. Religious attendance was associated with lower psychological distress (standard-deviation difference between weekly vs. never attendance, B = −0.14, confidence interval (CI): −0.19, −0.09; n = 24,598 pairs), and this was attenuated by almost half in the sibling analysis (B = −0.08, CI: = −0.13, −0.04). Religious attendance was also related to higher well-being (B = 0.29, CI: = 0.14, 0.45; n = 3,728 pairs), and this estimate remained unchanged in sibling analysis. Results were similar for religiousness. The findings suggest that previous longitudinal studies may have overestimated the association between religiosity and psychological distress, as the sibling estimate was only one-third of the previously reported meta-analytical association (standardized correlation −0.03 vs. −0.08).