Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78705, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2010 Sep;65(5):621-30. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbp112. Epub 2009 Dec 9.
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.
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 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.
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.
很少有研究探讨宗教参与度与老龄化人口中性别之间的关系变化。本文概述了一系列关于性别在调节宗教参与对心理健康的影响方面的作用的论点，并对其进行了实证检验。
本研究使用宗教、老龄化和健康调查的两个波次（2001 年和 2004 年），采用多元分析方法，对美国 66-95 岁的成年人进行了全国代表性样本的分析，考察了性别在宗教与心理健康联系中的差异影响。
结果表明：（a）男性从宗教参与中获得的心理健康益处多于女性；（b）组织宗教参与程度较高的女性与组织宗教参与程度中等和较低的女性具有相似的心理健康水平；（c）组织宗教参与程度非常高的男性往往比所有其他男性具有更高的心理健康水平。
发现组织宗教参与与心理健康之间的关系主要是非线性的，即那些宗教信仰程度最高的人获得了所有的益处。这些发现为美国老年人中宗教与心理健康关系的研究提供了一些有前途的方向。
