Psychological Well-being among Converts in Traditional and Nontraditional Religious Groups

Abstract

This study evaluated the psychological well-being of converts to religious groups foreign to Western culture in comparison to that of converts to mainstream religious groups. The subjects were 40 religious converts, members of four groups: Hare Krishna, Bahai, Jewish and Catholic. The results suggest a sudden upsurge of turmoil often triggered by a specific stressor as a more frequent antecedent to conversion among Jewish and Catholic subjects and a picture of chronic character difficulties as more frequent among the others.