Religious Attitudes among Psychiatric Patients and Normals

105 hospitalized psychiatric patients and 99 normals completed a 100-item inventory of religious attitudes. Factor analysis (of the inventory items, plus the variables of age, sex, education, church membership, and patient/nonpatient status) yielded ten factors, the first seven of them readily interpretable. Patient/non-patient status was highly loaded on two factors. Psychiatric patients were less likely to attend church (our factor 4) and more likely to hold a primordial, personalized, concretized religious outlook (our factor 2)-folk religion combined with social morality. God is personified and thought of in terms of a particular minister, a domineering school principal, mother, and father, one who punishes and expects perfection. Religion is for the simple minded and is mainly a matter of being honest and good. Belonging to church saves a person from hell. Other factors did not differentiate patients from non-patients: God as a loving heavenly father; reality of Satan and God as judge; affirmation of more abstract realities, such as good, evil, religion; utilitarian values of religion; negative affects associated with church and God. Regrettably, the patient and nonpatient samples were not matched on education or church membership. The normals had a higher level of education and higher rate of membership, and these variables were also highly loaded on the two differentiating factors (both of them on the church attendance factor, education on the folk religion factor). It is likely that these two variables are mediating the relationship between patient/non-patient status and the distinctive religious attitudes

Psychiatry · Sociology · Clinical Psychology · Medicine · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology

• The Sociology of Religion

  Thomas F O’dea, Thomas F O''Dea et al.•The American Catholic Sociological…•1954

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