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Gender Differences in the Association Between Religious Involvement and Depression: The Cache County (Utah) Study

Departments of ¹ Family, Consumer and Human Development, ² Psychology, and ³ Mathematics and Statistics, and ⁴ Center for Epidemiologic Studies, Utah State University, Logan.
⁵ Institute of Clinical Neurosciences, Göteborg University, Sweden.
⁶ Department of Mental Hygiene, the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
⁷ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle.
⁸ Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina.

Address correspondence to Maria C. Norton, PhD, Department of Family, Consumer and Human Development, Cache County Study on Memory in Aging, Utah State University, 4440 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-4440. E-mail: mnorton{at}cc.usu.edu

We examined the relation between religious involvement, membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and major depression in a population-based study of aging and dementia in Cache County, Utah. Participants included 4,468 nondemented individuals between the ages of 65 and 100 years who were interviewed in person. In logistic regression models adjusting for demographic and health variables, frequent church attendance was associated with a reduced prevalence of depression in women but increased prevalence in men. Social role loss and the potential impact of organizational power differential by sex are discussed. Though causality cannot be determined here, these findings suggest that the association between religious involvement and depression may differ substantially between men and women.