Medical illness, religion, health control and depression of institutionalized medically ill veterans in long-term care

Abstract

Utilizing multivariable multivariate regression procedures, we examine the relationships among medical illness, religion, health control beliefs and depression in 97 mostly elderly, institutionalized medically ill veterans in long term-care. Controlling for other domains of indicators, conditional canonical correlations showed that (1) religious motivation alone predicts religious coping, (2) religious coping alone predicts health control beliefs, and (3) both severity of illness/length of stay and health control beliefs predict depression. Result (1) is incompatible with the prediction by the multivariate belief-motivation theory of religiousness (MBMTR) (Schaefer and Gorsuch, 1991) that both religious belief and religious motivation determine religious coping. Results (2) and (3) are consistent with our hypothesis that control beliefs mediate the relationship between religious coping and depression. It is argued that a different operationalization of religious belief may still support the MBMTR. The role of religion in coping with health problems is discussed.