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Self-chosen involvement in new religious movements (NRMs): well-being and mental health from a longitudinal perspective
- Authors:
- NAMINI S., MURKEN S.
- Journal article citation:
- Mental Health Religion and Culture, 12(6), September 2009, pp.561-585.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
In this study, the question of whether current or past involvement with a new religious movement (NRM) has an adverse effect on psychosocial adjustment is investigated from a longitudinal perspective in an empirical study carried out in Germany which focused on people who became involved with an NRM as adults without having been socialised in the group with selected participants from 3 NRMs in Germany (a Pentecostal parish within the Federation of Pentecostal Churches, the New Apostolic Church and Jehovah's Witnesses). The article provides an overview of previous international studies on mental health and membership in NRMs and reports on the German study, in which life satisfaction, depression and anxiety were investigated over 3 years for 2 groups: 51 individuals who remained in the chosen NRM and 9 individuals who left the Pentecostal parish during the course of the study. The results indicated that joining an NRM is often preceded by some kind of (retrospectively reported) crisis, that well-being increases with involvement and that well-being and mental health during involvement with the groups proved to be relatively stable and comparable to that of other groups from the general population. The researchers concluded that involvement with an NRM is not generally associated with impaired mental health, and that there was no indication that the association between religion and mental health in the context of NRMs is different from that in the context of more traditional religions.
The relationship between spiritual experiences, transpersonal trust, social support, and sense of coherence and mental distress - a comparison of spiritually practising and non-practising samples
- Authors:
- KOHLS Niko, WALACH Harald, WIRTZ Markus
- Journal article citation:
- Mental Health Religion and Culture, 12(1), January 2009, pp.1-23.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
The pathways from exceptional experiences (measured with the Exceptional Experiences Questionnaire, EEQ), transpersonal trust (TPV), social support (F-SoZu) and sense of coherence (SOC) scales towards mental distress within a spiritually practising (SP) and a non-practising sample (NSP) were compared, using structural equation modelling. A high amount of variance explained for SOC, a moderate amount for F-SoZU and for TPV a very small amount only in the SP sample were found. In contrast, for the EEQ, which grasps positive and negative spiritual, psychopathological, and visionary dream experiences, a strong relationship was found for the NSP sample but only a moderate relationship for the SP sample. Further analysis revealed that the path coefficients from positive, negative spiritual, and psychopathological experiences to distress were significantly lower in the SP sample. Thus, as regular spiritual practice seems to alter the pathways to distress derived from positive and negative spiritual and psychopathological experiences, unidimensional questionnaires only grasping positive spiritual experiences seem to be inappropriate for explaining the intrapersonal mechanisms associated with regular spiritual practice.