Tag Archives: Depression

News

New study: belief in God can significantly improve mental health outcomes

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From Psych Central. (H/T Rob P.)

Excerpt:

A new study suggests belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness.

Researchers followed patients receiving care from a hospital-based behavioral health program to investigate the relationship between patients’ level of belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.

In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without.

“Belief was associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm,” says David H. Rosmarin, Ph.D., an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

The study looked at 159 patients, recruited over a one-year period. Each participant was asked to gauge their belief in God as well as their expectations for treatment outcome and emotion regulation, each on a five-point scale.

Levels of depression, well-being, and self-harm were assessed at the beginning and end of their treatment program.

Obviously, the issue of God’s existence is a matter to be decide based on what is true and false, but this kind of story might help us to get motivated for persuasion.

News

New study: married women less likely to suffer post-partum depression

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The UK Daily Mail reports. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

The study of more than 6,000 women looked at the risks and benefits of marriage.

It found women who cohabited with their partners rather than being married to them were also more likely to suffer domestic abuse and/or abuse drugs. The less time they had lived together, the higher their risk.

Research leader Dr. Marcelo Urquia, from the University of Toronto, said: ‘We did not see that pattern among married women, who experienced less psychosocial problems, regardless of the length of time they lived together with their spouses.’

The study found that 10.6 per cent of married women suffering from post-natal depression.

The figure rose to 20 per cent for women cohabiting in ‘common-law’ relationships and 35 per cent for single women.

Most dramatically, it rose to 67 per cent for women who were separated or divorced in the year prior to the birth of a child.

[…]The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, coincides with the latest [UK] Census figures unveiled this week which revealed married couple households are in the minority for the first time.

While the number of married people stays constant at 21.2 million, the  number of single adults households has rises by three million compared with 2001.

The census report said there were just under 2.3 million cohabiting couples last year, compared to 2.06 million in 2001.

Cohabitees now make up 10 per cent of all households, while married couples lead 33 per cent of households.

Lone parent households make up another 10 per cent, and 30 per cent of homes have just one individual.

The troubling thing to me is that people aren’t serious about doing what it takes to prepare for marriage, and then choosing the right person for the job. Everyone knows that marriage is better for you financially, emotionally, and for your health, but somehow, people treat it as a casino game. We don’t know how to prepare for marriage with practices that work, like chastity, courting and church attendance. Bad outcomes like cohabitation, divorce and single motherhood don’t just happen by accident. People choose wrong approaches because they don’t want to do things the right way.

News

The learned helplessness of young men in a feminist state

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Dr. Stuart Schneiderman writes an article that perfectly explains what young men are facing in a feminist-dominated society.

Excerpt:

It begins in the schools. There, empowered female teachers have set out to enhance the performance of girls by systematically favoring them at the expense of boys.

The Huffington Post reported that British boys are convinced that female teachers grade them unfairly. On the other hand, schoolgirls believe that male teachers grade them fairly.

I do not know the extent to which female American teachers try to punish boys in order to improve the performance of girls, but girls are consistently outperforming boys in schools and are taking up most of the places in colleges.

It seems inevitable that some boys are dropping out of school and failing to pursue advanced education because they have been demoralized.

Think about it, if all the girls receive great grades then boys will, at first try to improve their performance. Once they discover that they are still receiving lower grades, they will give up. This translates into depression.

Convinced, and not without reason, that the game is rigged, they stop playing.

Depression, as Martin Seligman defined it, is learned helplessness. When something is learned, someone is teaching it. When your female teachers convince you that you can never get it right and that you will never be judged fairly, you will become demoralized and depressed.

[…]Rob Long suggests that when these boys grow up they are unlikely to believe that it is possible to have harmonious relationships with women.

A recent poll bears this out. Suzanne Venker reports:

According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

More women want to get married and more men don’t. This suggests that men are increasingly being conditioned to dread close contact with women. It also suggests that men have discovered that, like school, the marriage game is rigged against them.

Read the whole thing.

I post a lot of things for Christian men about how to detect a marriage-enabled Christian woman. But I think we can short-circuit all of that, if you’re rushed. Just send the woman this article and then ask her whether the situation facing young men is a problem she is concerned about, and what she intends to do personally in order to stop it. That’s a one question interview right there.

UPDATE: Reformed Seth has more on this problem.