Is 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Actually Bad For One's Mental Health?

I love these kinds of optical illusions because they help remind me reality is not necessarily what I think it is.

A couple of weeks ago I book marked an article from the Guardian UK that discusses a recently released British study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. The article is based on a short abstract of the full study but I was not going to pay $15.00 for a 24 hour look at the full study to get a better idea of their methodology.  However, the abstract was written by the authors and they do state as their conclusion that: People who have a spiritual understanding of life in the absence of a religious framework are vulnerable to mental disorder.  That is a very strong conclusion since the authors give no indication in the abstract that they bothered with any in depth interviewing which might indicate if the mental health issues existed prior to becoming 'spiritual but not religious'.  I have published the entire Guardian article below and the author of the article, Mark Gordon,  suggests a different conclusion, that it's the fault of churches for failing to meet people's needs. 

Spiritual, but not religious? A dangerous mix

The prevalence of mental disorders among those who 'do God' alone is an indictment of churches' failure to meet their needs

Mark Gordon - Guardian UK - 1/9/2013

People who are "spiritual but not religious" are more likely to suffer poor mental health, according to a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Michael King of University College London and his colleagues examined 7,400 interviews with folk in Britain, of whom 35% had a religious understanding of life, 19% a spiritual one and 46% neither a religious nor spiritual outlook. The analysis led to one clear conclusion. "People who have a spiritual understanding of life in the absence of a religious framework are vulnerable to mental disorder [dependence on drugs, abnormal eating attitudes, anxiety, phobias and neuroses]." The work supports evidence from other studies too. (Actually it only supports a correlation.  It says nothing about causation.)

All the usual weaknesses associated with asking individuals about religion are at play here, as the authors acknowledge. Nonetheless, the study prompts a number of speculations.

The spiritual itch is a deep one in the human psyche, for those who feel it. To scratch without the support of others might lead to an inner obsession that spirals out of control. It is possible, too, that personal crises drive people to seek spiritual solace that of itself does not address the underlying psychological distress. Then again, the resources of a healthy spiritual tradition, not pursued in isolation, should provide or point to the means of addressing psychological problems. The ground is then gradually cleared for genuine spiritual growth.(Operative words are 'healthy spiritual tradition', which is true of religious traditions as well.)

This raises another question, though. Do religious organisations in the UK today take enough notice of the insights of psychology and, conversely, do schools of therapy treat spirituality seriously? As the Cambridge psychologist and priest Fraser Watts explored in a recent talk, American therapists, for example, seem to be far happier talking about their clients' spiritual concerns than their British counterparts.

This must highlight broader cultural differences. In the US, religion tends to carry associations of freedom. I remember an American priest once saying to me, when I expressed amazement at the prevalence of religiosity in the US, that Americans came from Europe fleeing religious persecution. The two words "religion" and "freedom" naturally go together in the American psyche. (Now there seems to be a qualifier in that some forms of Christianity are demanding and exalted status in this equation of religion and freedom.)

In Britain, though, it appears that many individuals view religion as an impingement upon their spiritual searching. Christianity, say, is felt to constrain life – perhaps because of the negative attitudes it projects about gay people and women; or because it presents belief as more important than growth; or because it looks more interested in sin than enlightenment. If that is so, the new research is a striking indictment of the failure of British churches to meet spiritual needs: individuals are not just not coming to church, some are becoming mentally ill as a result of religious failure.

Other results from the research are striking too, though similarly not determinative. People with no religious or spiritual understanding were significantly younger and more often white British, but were less likely to have qualifications beyond secondary school, perhaps challenging research purporting to show that atheists are more intelligent. (Or that main stream religions have abandoned the lower economic classes.)

Another finding of this work was that those who were neither religious nor spiritual had just as good mental health as those the religious. This contradicts a notion widely held in positive psychology that religion is good for happiness (though that positive correlation typically derives from North American evidence.)

Finally, the research challenges the stance of those who are spiritual but not religious. It might be called the individualism delusion, the conviction that I can "do God" on my own. And yet, as the psychotherapist Donald Winnicott argued, human beings need to work through traditions to resource their personal creativity. Only in the lives of others can we make something rich of our own life. To be spiritual but not religious might be said to be like embarking on an extreme sport while refusing the support of safety procedures and the wisdom of experts who have made the jump before. Spirituality is like love: more risky than you can countenance when you're falling for it.

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I'm never quite sure what to make of these kinds of survey studies. I'd really need to see the survey and get a better feel for the methodology, consequently I take these results with something of a grain of salt.  I've actually read far more studies linking severe mental illness, at least in terms of psychotic delusional content, with fundamental religious interpretations. There are also more than a few studies that link increased sexual and physical abuse and major depression with being raised in fundamentalist families.  Even then, I'm not sure I would be so quick to establish causation with the correlation.  When one is talking about demonstrated changes in neuro chemistry it's hard to separate nature from nurture.

There's no doubt that some 'spiritual but not religious' tend march to their own drum and eschew communal spiritual experiences.  Although in general it's never particularly healthy to isolate in your own little world, I'd have to see more data to conclude the isolation was a product of the spirituality and not a precursor. On the other hand  I would hardly be shocked if a similar study done with video game players found that all that isolation wasn't particularly good for their mental health as well.  It just seems when the topic is spirituality or religion, negative correlations generate more media interest which all too often slides into causation.

My clients want me to teach a group called "Psychotic or Psychic'.  I have not done so for a number of reasons and one of them is the fine line between the two experiences.  Most of that line has to do with one's ability to live with the knowledge that the real world is mostly set in stone in terms of our experiential reality, but not always.  A person almost has to be super sane to seek out those experiences which transcend normal reality.  In other words they have to truly hold to a world view which can encompass seeming 'impossible' changes in otherwise stable aspects of time/space/matter reality.  In my experience those who seek out these experiences are generally unprepared for the consequences, both emotional and intellectual, of actually having these experiences and that includes those who seek out these experiences from a religious or spiritual framework.  In some respects, those who approach these experiences from a religious or spiritual framework are at a disadvantage because when the fear hits, and it will because our egos are vested in this reality and not other realities, their framework for dealing with the fear is to go right to the devil card because fear is cognitively linked with bad/threatening/evil.  Jesus was certainly aware of this because His first words to His followers after his Resurrection were 'Be not afraid' and when Thomas intellectually doubted, Jesus allowed him to touch the reality of his risen body.  Thomas found out Jesus was not a visual hallucination or an ephemeral group psychotic experience produced by desperate wishful thinking.  He was the real deal.

I don't know with any certainty whether being 'spiritual but not religious' is bad for one's mental health.  What I do know is that seeking out non ordinary experiences without meditating on the potential consequences, and this includes drug use, can be bad for one's mental health.  Maybe the moral of the story is 'be careful what you wish for because it may not be what you expect.'