Spirituality, Religious Attendance and Health Complaints in Czech Adolescents

0525214 - PSÚ 2021 RIV CH eng J - Journal Article
Žídková, R. - Glogar, P. - Poláčková Šolcová, Iva - van Dijk, J.P. - Kalman, M. - Tavel, P. - Maliňáková, K.
Spirituality, Religious Attendance and Health Complaints in Czech Adolescents.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Roč. 17, č. 7 (2020), č. článku 2339. ISSN 1661-7827. E-ISSN 1660-4601
Institutional support: RVO:68081740
Keywords : health complaints * psychosomatic syndrome * adolescents * religiosity * spirituality * secular environment
OECD category: Psychology (including human - machine relations)
Impact factor: 3.390, year: 2020
Method of publishing: Open access
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2339/htm

Research in some religious countries shows that religiosity and spirituality positively affect adolescent health. We studied whether religiosity and spirituality also have positive associations with adolescent health in a secular country. We tested the associations between religious attendance and spirituality and self-reported health and health complaints using a representative sample of Czech adolescents (n = 4182, 14.4 ± 1.1 years, 48.6% boys) from the 2014 health behavior in school-aged children (HBSC) study. We used religious attendance, the adjusted shortened version of the spiritual well-being scale (SWBS), and its two components—religious well-being (RWB) and existential well-being (EWB)—as independent variables and the eight item “HBSC symptom checklist” and self-reported overall health as dependent variables. A higher level of spirituality was associated with lower chances of health complaints and self-reported health, ranging from a 9% to 30% decrease in odd ratios (OR). Religious attendance was not associated with any of the observed variables. The EWB showed a negative association with all of the observed variables, with associations ranging from a 19% to 47% decrease. The RWB was associated with a higher risk of nervousness (OR = 1.12), while other associations were not significant. Non-spiritual but attending respondents were more likely to report a higher occurrence of stomachache (OR = 2.20) and had significantly worse overall health (OR = 2.38). In a largely secular country, we found that spirituality and the EWB (unlike religious attendance and the RWB) could have a significant influence on adolescent health
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0309404