Religiosity and Preventing Risky Behaviors

There is a consensus among psychological theorists indicating that beliefs and behaviors are related. Since most of the homogeneous and institutionalized tenets among social groups and people, religious beliefs relation with behaviors is a theme deserved to be studied. Examining the relation between religious beliefs and risky behaviors will help to predict and prevent such behaviors. Most psychiatrists and psychologists working in religious-social environments may hear repeated sentences from their stressful clients every day such as: " I would put an end to my life to stop all these sufferings, if I were allowed by religion or if the afterlife and the hell did not exist; " or " I would have already done something (bad) to myself if I didn't fear God. " In the recent decade many studies uncovered the negative relationship between adherence to the religious beliefs and showing certain behaviors such as suicide (1, 2), drug abuse (3-5), alcoholism (4, 5), violence (6), and risky sexual behaviors (4, 7, 8). The positive relationship between religiosity and mental health is demonstrated in some studies, such as that of Ronneberg, (9), while others assume religion as the balancing factor in causal relation of other variables with risky behaviors. For example, the level of religiosity was considered as a balancing factor in a study on the relationship between depression and suicide (10). A limited number of studies have also dealt with the mechanisms by which religion influences delinquent behaviors. The approach used by some studies was to separate internal and external religions (11), while the others considered religion in two categories: personal and social (5). The survey tools were mostly the questionnaires filled either by patients or their relatives. The questionnaires have covered different dimensions such as importance of religion, adherence to religious rites and customs, and/ or participation in religious services. It has been tried to study various communities including those of Muslims, Christians, and Jews living in various parts of the world (12). Relying on religious doctrines, several intervention-al studies have also been conducted aiming to improve the religious attitudes to influence the mental health in stressful people (13). Regarding the reviewed meta-analyses and findings it can be concluded that analysis of the role religion plays in emergence of risky behaviors is a broad and multi-functional field where the researchers are still at its very beginning. In fact, religion includes a broad range of forms from internal …