Prospective Associations between ReligiousnessSpirituality and Depression and Mediating Effects of Forgiveness in a Nationally Representative Sample of United States Adults

Abstract EN

The present investigation examines the prospective associations of religiousness/spirituality with depression and the extent to which various dimensions of forgiveness act as mediating mechanisms of these associations.

Data are from a nationally representative sample of United States adults who were first interviewed in 1998 and reinterviewed six months later.

Measures of religiousness/spirituality, forgiveness, and various sociodemographics were collected.

Depression was assessed using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview administered by trained interviewers.

Results showed that religiousness/spirituality, forgiveness of oneself and others, and feeling forgiven by God were associated, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, with depressive status.

After controlling for initial depressive status, only forgiveness of oneself and others remained statistically significant predictors of depression.

Path analyses revealed that religiousness/spirituality conveyed protective effects, prospectively, on depression by way of an indirect path through forgiveness of others but not forgiveness of oneself.

Hence, forgiveness of others acts as a mechanism of the salutary effect of religiousness/spirituality, but forgiveness of oneself is an independent predictor.

Conclusions regarding the continued development of this type of research and for the treatment of clients with depression are offered.