Michael J. McFarland

Religion and Mental Health Among Older Adults: Do the Effects of Religious Involvement Vary by Gender?

Objectives. Few studies explore how the relationship between religious involvement and mental health varies by gender among the aging population. This article outlines a series of arguments concerning the effects of gender in moderating the effect of religious involvement on mental health and examines them empirically. Methods. Using two waves (2001 and 2004) of the Religion, Aging, and Health Survey, this study estimates the differential effect of gender in the religion–mental health connection using multivariate analyses for a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults aged 66–95 years. Results. Results suggest that (a) men obtain more mental health benefits from religious involvement than women, (b) women with higher levels of organizational religious involvement have similar levels of mental health as those with moderate and lower levels of organizational religious involvement, (c) men with very high levels of organizational religious involvement tend to have much higher levels of mental health than all other men. Discussion. The relationship between organizational religious involvement and mental health is found to be mostly a nonlinear one such that those with the highest levels of religiosity receive all the benefits. The findings suggest a number of promising research directions on the religion–mental health connection among older Americans.

The Role of Religion in Shaping Sexual Frequency and Satisfaction: Evidence from Married and Unmarried Older Adults

This study assesses the role of religion in influencing sexual frequency and satisfaction among older married adults and sexual activity among older unmarried adults. The study proposes and tests several hypotheses about the relationship between religion and sex among these two groups of older Americans, using nationally representative data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. Results suggest that among married older adults, religion is largely unrelated with sexual frequency and satisfaction, although religious integration in daily life shares a weak, but positive, association with pleasure from sex. For unmarried adults, such religious integration exhibits a negative association with having had sex in the last year among women, but not among men.

Forgiveness of Others and Health: Do Race and Neighborhood Matter?

OBJECTIVES This study examines the relationship between interpersonal forgiveness and health for older Blacks and Whites. We outline a series of arguments concerning the following: (a) how forgiveness can affect health, (b) how forgiveness may be more protective for Blacks, and (c) how the relationship between forgiveness and health may vary by neighborhood deterioration. METHOD Two waves (2001 and 2004) of the Religion, Aging, and Health Survey provided data from a nationally representative elderly sample of 436 Blacks and 500 Whites. Measures included sociodemographics, forgiveness, and three dimensions of health: self-reported health, alcohol use, and chronic conditions. We employ both longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses. RESULTS Results suggest that forgiveness of others was protective of health for Blacks but not Whites. Moreover, among Blacks, we found the following: (a) forgiveness was positively associated with self-reported health over time, (b) forgiveness was negatively associated with alcohol use and number of chronic conditions, and (c) forgiveness interacted with neighborhood deterioration such that the beneficial effects of forgiveness for self-reported health did not extend to those living in run-down neighborhoods. DISCUSSION Race and neighborhood were shown to be important for understanding the forgiveness-health connection. Forgiveness was associated with better health for Blacks but not Whites, consistent with McCulloughs evolutionary framework (McCullough, M. E. (2008). Beyond revenge: The evolution of the forgiveness instinct. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass), forgiveness was beneficial in some settings but had a deleterious impact in more noxious environments. This study suggests that researchers should give more consideration to race and social context in attempting to more fully understand the relationship between forgiveness and health.

Poverty and Awakening Cortisol in Adolescence: The Importance of Timing in Early Life.

The deleterious effects of poverty on mental and physical health are routinely argued to operate, at least in part, via dysregulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, although empirical examinations connecting poverty with HPA axis functioning are rare. Research on the effects of timing of poverty is a particularly neglected aspect of this relationship. This study uses 15 years of prospective data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to assess how exposure to poverty during infancy, childhood, and adolescence is related to awakening cortisol (n = 826), a marker of HPA axis functioning. Among female participants, poverty exposure in infancy and adolescence, but not childhood, was negatively associated with awakening cortisol. Poverty exposure was unrelated to cortisol among male participants. The importance of timing and gender differences are discussed along with directions for future research.

Does a college education reduce depressive symptoms in American young adults

Higher levels of educational attainment are consistently associated with better mental health. Whether this association represents an effect of education on mental health, however, is less clear as omitted variable bias remains a pressing concern with education potentially serving as a proxy for unobserved factors including family background and genetics. To combat this threat and come closer to a causal estimate of the effect of education on depressive symptoms, this study uses data on 231 monozygotic twin pairs from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and employs a twin-pair difference-in-difference design to account for both unobserved shared factors between twin pairs (e.g. home, school, and neighborhood environment throughout childhood) and a number of observed non-shared but theoretically relevant factors (e.g. cognitive ability, personality characteristics, adolescent health). We find an inverse association between possessing a college degree and depressive symptoms in both conventional and difference-in-difference models. Results of this study also highlight the potentially overlooked role of personality characteristics in the education and mental health literature.

Does a cancer diagnosis influence religiosity? Integrating a life course perspective

Based on a life course framework we propose that a cancer diagnosis is associated with increased religiosity and that this relationship is contingent upon three social clocks: cohort (1920-1945, 1946-1964, 1964+), age-at-diagnosis, and years-since-diagnosis. Using prospective data from the National Survey of Midlife Development (N=3443), taken in 1994-1995 and 2004-2006, we test these arguments. Results showed that a cancer diagnosis was associated with increased religiosity. Moreover, we found: (a) no evidence that the influence of cancer varied by cohort; (b) strong evidence that people diagnosed with cancer at earlier ages experienced the largest increases in religiosity; and (c) no evidence that changes in religiosity are influenced by years-since-diagnosis. Our study emphasizes how personal reactions to cancer partly reflect macro-level processes, represented by age-at-diagnosis, and shows that the religion-health connection can operate such that health influences religiosity. The study also highlights the sociological and psychological interplay that shapes peoples religiosity.

College Education and Sense of Control A Twin-discordant Design

Although researchers routinely find a positive association between education and sense of control, it is unclear whether this association represents a causal connection or rather reflects correlations with unobserved factors related to family background and genetics. Using data on monozygotic twin pairs (n = 231) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the authors employ a twin-pair fixed-effects design that accounts for all unobserved shared factors between twin pairs. The results show that possessing a college degree was associated with a 0.79 standard deviation increase in sense of control relative to those with a high school degree or less. By providing the most conservative test of this causal pathway to date, the authors provide empirical support to theoretical arguments positing that educational effects on health are realized in part through increasing individual sense of control.

Forgiveness of Others, Race/Ethnicity, and Health: A Nascent Area of Inquiry

The past decade has witnessed a dramatic increase in research linking forgiveness to health and well-being. In this chapter we highlight race as one overlooked area of research in the forgiveness-health literature. To understand the complex interplay among race, forgiveness and health, as well as the broader social context we consider two general propositions: (a) blacks are more forgiving of others than their white counterparts; and (b) forgiveness has a more beneficial impact on health for blacks than whites. Overall, we conclude: (a) there are strong theoretical reasons to suspect the relationship between forgiveness and health varies by race; (b) there are pronounced black-white differences in levels of interpersonal forgiveness; (c) the role of race in the forgiveness-health connection as well as the role of the broader social context have been woefully understudied and present a promising direction for future research.

Weighed down by discriminatory policing: Perceived unfair treatment and black-white disparities in waist circumference

Police maltreatment, whether experienced personally or indirectly through one’s family or friends, represents a potentially harmful stressor, particularly for minority populations. We address this issue by investigating: (1) how waist circumference (WC) varies by personal and vicarious exposure to unfair treatment by police (UTBP); and (2) to what extent exposure to UTBP explains the black-white disparity in WC. We employed data collected from a community-based sample of black (n = 601) and white (n = 608) adults living in Nashville-Davidson county Tennessee to address these questions. Results from our final linear regression model showed that those who reported vicarious UTBP had WCs that were approximately 2 in. greater than those who did not (b = 2.03; p = 0.003). While personal UTBP was not linked to higher WC, a post-hoc analysis suggested that our ability to detect an association was complicated by selection. Binary mediation analysis revealed that differential exposure to vicarious UTBP accounted for approximately 12% of the black-white WC disparity among women. We found no black-white differences in WC among men. The association between vicarious UTBP and WC did not vary by age, race, or gender. Overall, our findings point toward the role of discriminatory policing as a potential upstream contributor to racial disparities in health.

Age, Perceptions of Mattering, and Allostatic Load

Objectives: Engagement in close personal ties has been shown to reduce risk for morbidity and mortality. In this study, we assess the extent to which one dimension of social relationships, mattering to others, conditions the positive relationship between age and allostatic load (AL). We do so to test the assumption that age-related declines in health are less prominent among those with high levels of mattering. Method: Poisson regression models were estimated using data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study (NSAHS). The NSAHS is a community-based study of 1,026 African American and White study participants, aged 22 to 69 years, residing in Davidson County, Tennessee. Results: Analyses revealed that mattering conditioned or modified the relationship between age and AL. Specifically, we found that AL increases with age and this increase was significantly greater among those with moderate or low perceptions of mattering to others. Discussion: This study confirms that perceptions of mattering to one’s significant others are inversely related to physical health problems. This is so because mattering captures the positive and protective aspects of these relationships.