Catholic League of Legends

Druid ritual at Stonehenge, 2007? Via Wikipedia.

Right Wing Watch, via Tom Boggioni:

Asked by host Malzberg about his statement that atheists and agnostics die earlier and represent a large proportion of Americans in mental institutions, [Catholic League president Bill] Donohue replied, “Absolutely. You take a look at secularists and compare them to people of faith, there’s a huge difference when it comes to health and happiness: mental health, physical health, individual happiness.”

Well, Sean Thomas at the Daily Telegraph 8/14/2013 claims to have evidence that religiosity aids mental health, and also that religious people are nicer than the nonreligious, but the few items he links to don't really back him up as far as I can tell. And Sansone, Kelley and Forbis (2010) found a negative correlation between religion/spirituality and borderline personality symptoms among outpatients at an internal medicine clinic, but that's just one clinic and one set of symptoms and "borderline", as the name implies, isn't all the way cray.

Powell, Shahabi, and Thoresen (2003) did find that going to services can prolong the lives of the healthy but not that it helps the sick, or that the effect has anything to do with their beliefs:

In healthy participants, there is a strong, consistent, prospective, and often graded reduction in risk of mortality in church/service attenders. This reduction is approximately 25% after adjustment for confounders. Religion or spirituality protects against cardiovascular disease, largely mediated by the healthy lifestyle it encourages. Evidence fails to support a link between depth of religiousness and physical health. In patients, there are consistent failures to support the hypotheses that religion or spirituality slows the progression of cancer or improves recovery from acute illness but some evidence that religion or spirituality impedes recovery from acute illness. The authors conclude that church/service attendance protects healthy people against death.

A study of Israeli kibbutzim by Kark, Shemi, Friedlander, Martin, Manor, and Blondheim (1996) conducted from 1970 to 1985 found significantly lower mortality rates in religious than secular kibbutzim. Lutgendorf, Russell, Ullrich, Harris, and Wallace (2004) seem to be suggesting that regular services attendance promotes longevity by stimulating Interleukin-6 secretion, which I don't know if I want to believe that. There may be a social effect in older persons, the fact of a congregation expecting to see you every week and likely to call you up if you don't show up; or just the enjoyment of hanging out itself, which would surely be just as good if you went to weekly festivities at an atheistical or humanist association.

Thoresen and Harris (2002) concluded that religion really will help you live longer, but not very much, and for reasons unknown:

RS [Religion and Spirituality] factors appear to be associated with physical and overall health, but the relation appears far more complex and modest than some contend. Which specific RS factors enhance or endanger health and well-being remains unclear.

As far as mental health goes, according to Baetz, Griffin, Bowen, Koenig, and Marcoux (2004) religious observance is associated with lower levels of depression in Canadians, but the opposite if they take it too seriously:

More frequent worship service attendees had significantly fewer depressive symptoms. In contrast, those who stated spiritual values or faith were important or perceived themselves to be spiritual/religious had higher levels of depressive symptoms, even after controlling for potential mediating and confounding factors.

For Neeleman and Lewis (1994), 73 psychiatric patients all had higher scores in self-reported religiosity than a control group of 25, the psychotics scoring the highest while depressives and parasuicidal patients scored in the middle.

Koreans with strong spiritual values are more likely to be depressed than atheists but less likely to be alcoholics, per Jong-Ik Park, Jin Pyo Hong, Subin Park, and Maeng-Je Cho (2012), hmmm; Catholics more likely to have single episodes of depression and Protestants to suffer from anxiety disorder.

In an analysis of data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of U.S. Adults, Nava R. Silton, Kevin J. Flannelly, Kathleen Galek, Christopher G. Ellison (2014) found a correlation between what kind of God you believe in and your mental health, but no difference between those who do and those who don't believe at all.

Three beliefs about God were tested separately in ordinary least squares regression models to predict five classes of psychiatric symptoms: general anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion. Belief in a punitive God was positively associated with four psychiatric symptoms [all except general anxiety], while belief in a benevolent God was negatively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, controlling for demographic characteristics, religiousness, and strength of belief in God. Belief in a deistic God and one’s overall belief in God were not significantly related to any psychiatric symptoms.

I should note that Donohue seems generally to discount the punitive-God side in his public utterances, allowing the possibility that there is salvation outside the Church, not quite disagreeing with the unspeakable Pastor Hagee as to whether Hurricane Katrina was a punishment to the Mississippi Delta for harboring gay people, but magnanimously refusing to consider whether Christopher Hitchens (anti–Mother Teresa, but also anti-abortion) is in Hell. I guess that means when he

draws a parallel between the experiences of Christians in America and those of Christians facing violent persecution in the Mideast

he's probably expressing more general anxiety than paranoia. I don't believe anybody has studied the relationship between religiosity and psychopathic dishonesty or I would have something to say about that.

Harold Koenig's wise and comprehensive survey of the literature (2009, abstract here) holds that

While religious beliefs and practices can represent powerful sources of comfort, hope, and meaning, they are often intricately entangled with neurotic and psychotic disorders, sometimes making it difficult to determine whether they are a resource or a liability

and I'll bet that's the most honest and useful statement you'll be seeing any time soon. So I think I'll award Donohue's statement Three Cheneys, or Pretty Damn False.

Image from Jim Newell's Salon review of the Cheney Politico luncheon last July (we covered it here).

If you are crazy, you might be better off having a religion, but better one of the outliers like the Hare Krishnas or Druids, as Emmanuelle Peters, Samantha Day, Jacqueline Mckenna and Gilli Orbach (2010) found. It seems that delusionality loves company of a certain kind:

As predicted, individuals from the NRMs [New Religious Movements] scored significantly higher than the control groups on all the delusional measures apart from levels of distress. They did not show as much florid symptomatology as the psychotic patients, but could not be differentiated from the deluded group on the number of delusional items endorsed on the Peters et al. Delusions Inventory (PDI; Peters, Day & Garety, 1996), or on levels of conviction. However, they were significantly less distressed and preoccupied by their experiences. No differences were found between the two control groups on any of the delusional measures, suggesting that religious beliefs per se do not account for the NRMs members scores.

Visualization of the probably as yet nonexistent California redwoods community of the Dryad's Realm, from the Reformed Druid website Mithril Star. I did not realize they had had a Reformation. Certainly looks healthy, for what it's worth.