The following comes from a July 2 story in the L.A. Times.
Against a grim backdrop of rising suicide rates among American women, new research has revealed a blinding shaft of light: One group of women — practicing Catholics — appears to have bucked the national trend toward despair and self-harm.
Compared with women who never participated in religious services, women who attended any religious service once a week or more were five times less likely to commit suicide between 1996 and 2010, says a study published Wednesday by JAMA Psychiatry.
It’s not clear how widely the findings can be applied to a diverse population of American women. In a study population made up of nurses and dominated by women who identified themselves as either Catholic or Protestant, the suicide rate observed was about half that for U.S. women as a whole. Of 89,708 participants aged 30 to 55, 36 committed suicide at some point over 15 years.
The women’s church attendance was not the only factor; which church they attended mattered as well. Protestant women who worshiped weekly at church were far less likely to take their own lives than were women who seldom or never attended services. But these same Protestant women were still seven times more likely to die by their own hand than were their devout Catholic sisters.
Among especially devout Catholic women — those in the pews more than once a week — suicides were a vanishing phenomenon. Among the 6,999 Catholic women who said they attended mass more than once a week, there was not a single suicide.
The suicide-prevention effect of religion was clearly not a simple matter of group identity: Self-identified Catholics who never attended mass committed suicide nearly as often as did women of any religion who were not active worshipers.
Instead, the authors suggested that attendance at religious services is “a form of meaningful social participation” that buffers women against loneliness and isolation — both factors that are strongly implicated in depression and suicide. “Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource that psychiatrists and clinicians could explore with their patients, as appropriate,” wrote a team of researchers led by Tyler J. VanderWeele of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The new study comes just two months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documented a steep rise in suicides in the United States between 1994 and 2014. Suicide rates climbed among men and women and in all age groups between 10 and 74. Although women remain much less likely than men to commit suicide, the CDC found that gap closing. Among women between 45 and 64 — the ages at which women are most likely to kill themselves — the rate of suicide in 2014 vaulted 80% over 1999’s rates….
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, associate professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine, said the new study’s design and its findings strengthen a link between religious practice and mental health that was first explored by the sociologist Emile Durkheim in 1897.
The lengthy duration of the current study — women were asked about their religious attendance every two years starting in 1996 and then followed until 2010 — “suggests a causal relationship between religious practice and a significantly lower risk of suicide, especially among Catholics,” said Kheriaty, who was not involved with the new research.
Kheriaty, who is co-author of The Catholic Guide to Depression, acknowledged the power of strong religious proscriptions against suicide. But, he added, religion may protect against despair as well.
“Religious convictions and practices can help people foster a sense of hope, even in the midst of major crises or adversities,” said Kheriaty. “Religious faith can help people find a sense of meaning and purpose even in suffering,” he added.
“It’s not our role to ‘prescribe’ religion… or proselytize to our patients,” said Kheriaty. “It is safe to assume that religious conviction and faith must be genuine and sincere if they are to provide the mental and physical health benefits that several studies have suggested.”
But if patients are inclined to explore religion or spirituality, said Kheriaty, “doctors can encourage patients to explore such activities confident that religious practices will likely not harm, and may indeed, help, their patient’s mental health.”
The rise in the rate of female suicide is probably attributable to the prevalence of feminism, which is anti-woman, destructive of women and harmful to male-female relationships.
The fact that devout Catholic women have a low suicide rate is probably due to such women being less prone to accept feminist ideals as standards for their aspirations or expectations for their lives, not merely due to socializing at church. Feminists can socialize at feminist poetry readings and such. Devout Catholic women inculcate a genuine femininity that harmonizes with God’s creation of female nature and his plan for women in families, society and Church; that’s their secret to happiness.
Secular women and self-identifying “Catholic” but not…
Secular women and self-identifying “Catholic” but not practicing women are more likely to buy into angry feminist victim ideology, which will tend to make them miserable. If you think men are out to get you, that society is patriarchal, that there is a gender-gap and a glass ceiling in society, that it’s okay to murder the baby in your womb, that you can find fulfillment in a series of unattached sexual hookups, then of course you’re going to be angry and depressed, which could lead to higher rates of suicide.
In sum, secular feminist women are trying to be men and envy men. By denying their female nature, they are making themselves miserable. Devout Catholic women are accepting their female nature and living in harmony with it,…
Interesting study, thanks CCD for bringing it to us. We could use more of this kind of article and the research that underlies it.
A excellent resource for all things truly Catholic is: http://www.magiscenter.com
Just watched ‘Fr. Robert Spitzer’s Universe’ on EWTN. It is on every Wednesday @ 11am PT. You may remember Fr. Spitzer from Gonzoga University where he used to be president. He has been afflicted with blindness but boy that has not stopped him in any way. He is determined to bring souls to God. He explains the miracle of God’s universe in easy to understand terms. He has books re: the secret of happiness. You will not regret visiting this site or watching him on EWTN. He is an inspiration and a very good priest. Praise God for all his work. Let’s all pray for a miracle healing for Fr. Spitzer, should it be God’s holy will.