A recent featured article in the Harvard Gazette email newsletter offered this tantalizing title: “Why Public Health Should Attend to the Spiritual Side of Life” [written by Tyler VanderWeele, Harvard Public Health, April 10, 2024, link is here]. The author bemoaned the lack of attention to spiritual matters in the world of public health, that in public health textbooks and in classrooms, religion and spiritual practices are ignored. Public health students and professionals use all kinds of information to understand good, and not so good, health outcomes. What influences the health of citizens? There are many issues taken into account and considered, except one big one: religion.
Why is this? Is it a lack of awareness? Is it connected to a lack of study and data? It turns out that it’s not the lack of study and data:
A major 2022 systematic review in the Journal of the American Medical Association documented 215 studies, each with sample sizes over 1,000 participants, using longitudinal data to evaluate the relationship between religion and health. The evidence from meta-analyses, large longitudinal studies (including from Harvard’s own Nurses’ Health Study), and handbooks providing more extensive documentation, suggests that weekly religious service attendance is longitudinally associated with lower mortality risk, lower depression, less suicide, better cardiovascular disease survival, better health behaviors, and greater marital stability, happiness, and purpose in life.
For many of those who regularly attend worship services and participate in some way in the care of and attention to the spiritual side of life, the health benefits are well-known. We know that religious communities are—generally speaking— in the business of caring and attending. We don’t need to dig deep into documentation and research. We live the data.
It is frustrating to realize that one of the easiest solutions to some of our country’s most troubling ills already exists, but is ignored and unappreciated. In many cases, the solution to loneliness, unhappiness, depression, isolation, etc, is right in the middle of the community. In fact, there are often quite a few of these organizations easily accessible.
As I read the short article by Professor VanderWeele, I started thinking about my own annual visits to the doctor’s office. I’ve noticed that the paperwork has been accumulating, year after year. In addition to a survey of any changes to my health that I’ve noticed since my last visit, there are usually several more pages of questions for me to answer before I’m invited into the exam room, questions like: do I feel safe at home; am I experiencing food insecurity; do I have symptoms of depression; how much alcohol do I consume; do I smoke; do I use recreational drugs and, if so, how often; do I ever wake up in the morning with no memory of what I did the night before. Etc. Etc.
Nowhere among those questions is there anything about my religious affiliation or my spiritual practices. There is nothing that suggests that any health professional I will encounter cares in any way— or has been taught to care— about the spiritual side of my life. As I think about it, I wonder if my primary care nurse practitioner has even noticed what my job is, and that it is in the realm of religion.
What’s even more frustrating is that this avenue of health and well-being is disappearing. Congregations and groups of people who gather regularly for worship, attending to their relationship with God as well as with each other are diminishing. And, many of these communities have dwindled to a point where they can no longer sustain themselves. Countless church buildings around the country have been sold for another purpose or abandoned.
I realize that there are lots of complicating issues when it comes to the relationship between the practice of religion and community life. It is well-known that many people have been harmed through the unhealthy and illegal actions of clergy and others working in the field of religion. Real damage has been done to individuals, families and communities. Still, such problematic behavior is not widespread. If the studies are to be believed, religious communities have a lot to offer in supporting good public health. But, if this benefit is not recognized more widely, it will continue to decline. It’s hard to gauge the consequences, but clearly they are great— for everyone.