Created Sick? Well, Not Exactly… Canadian Atheists Report Similar Levels of Impairment and Disability to the Religiously Affiliated

Abstract

Religion/spirituality (R/S) is positively associated with a variety of health outcomes, although how R/S relates to the likelihood or severity of impairment or disability is understudied. Given the broad salutary effects of R/S, we tested if nonreligious groups (specifically atheists) were more likely to report impairment or were more likely to report greater disability. Using Canadian data (N ≥ 1,000) from the 2015 General Social Survey (Cycle 29), we compared atheists to Agnostics, Nones, Protestants, Catholics, Christian Orthodox, and Eastern Religion practitioners. The results indicated that Atheists were slightly more likely to report the presence of impairment and disability relative to Catholics, but these effects were in the trivial-to-small range. When exploring the severity of self-reported disability across religious groups, atheists did not differ from any other religious group. These results are intriguing as the broader R/S-health literature has suggested that greater secularism should be associated with a health penalty; however, we found limited evidence to support this. Although we cannot state that atheism is necessarily healthy, the results of the current study would suggest that atheism is certainly not unhealthy.