Prayer, Meditation, and Anxiety: Durkheim Revisited

Frequent communal prayer is linked to more anxiety-related symptoms, while attending worship services is linked to fewer such symptoms among American adults. Attending services together with communal prayer appears to reduce anxiety. Meditation, measured as a yes-or-no practice, shows no connection to anxiety in the same sample. These findings come from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey and suggest that collective religious activities have selective effects on mental health, with worship attendance offering benefits but communal prayer alone associated with greater anxiety.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Durkheim argued that religion’s emphasis on the supernatural combined with its unique ability to foster strong collective bonds lent it power to confer distinctive social benefits. Subsequent research has confirmed these propositions with respect to religion and mental health. At the same time, meditation has been linked to mental health benefits in intervention-based studies. Our investigation offers a unique test of two comparable inhibitors of anxiety-related symptoms in the general population, namely, prayer versus meditation. Using data from the 2010 wave of the Baylor Religion Survey, we find that frequent communal prayer is correlated with an increased incidence of anxiety-related symptoms whereas worship service attendance is negatively associated with reported anxiety. Attendance also combines with communal prayer to yield anxiety-reducing benefits. Meditation, measured as a dichotomous indicator, is unrelated to reported anxiety in our sample of American adults. Our study underscores the selective efficacy of collective forms of religious expression, and points to several promising directions for future research.