Religion-justified childhood abuse linked to higher adult anxiety and depression

Survivors of childhood maltreatment often carry emotional scars into adulthood, but those whose abuse was justified by religious teachings show even higher levels of psychological distress. A recent study reveals that these individuals report greater rates of anxiety, depression, stress, and anger in adulthood compared to people who experienced secular forms of abuse. These findings were published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.

Faith and spirituality are generally viewed as protective factors in psychology. Religious communities routinely provide social support and a shared sense of purpose that helps individuals recover from traumatic events. High levels of religious involvement are consistently linked to lower rates of depression and fewer physical health issues.

However, researchers and advocates have noted that perpetrators sometimes weaponize faith to excuse their actions. This specific form of maltreatment relies on religious texts, authority figures, or sacred contexts to validate harmful behavior. Psychologists refer to this dynamic as religion-justified abuse.

Examples of this behavior include parents who cite specific Bible verses to defend the use of harsh physical punishment against their children. It also encompasses spiritual leaders who use their trusted status to commit sexual abuse and then claim divine authority to demand silence from their victims. Historically, it includes the forced cultural assimilation and abuse of Native American children in church-run boarding schools.

Public awareness of maltreatment within sacred contexts has grown in recent years. Movements driven by technology and social media have exposed abuse cover-ups across multiple major religious denominations. Despite this growing awareness, standardized psychological evaluations rarely ask patients about the potential religious context of their past traumas.

Hannah Doctor, a psychology researcher at the University of North Dakota, led a team to investigate how this specific type of abuse relates to adult mental health. The research team included RaeAnn Anderson at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, along with John Paul Legerski and Alan R. King at the University of North Dakota. They wanted to understand if relying on religious justifications changed the psychological trajectory for survivors.

The team suspected that religion-justified abuse might create unique psychological barriers to coping. When faith is tangled up in early trauma, it could mutate from a source of comfort into an instrument of guilt and confusion. The researchers designed a study to test whether the emotional fallout of maltreatment differs when religion is involved.

To explore this idea, the researchers recruited 839 adults living in the United States. They used an online crowdsourcing platform to gather survey responses, offering participants small financial compensation for their time. The participants varied widely in age, gender, and religious background, with about a quarter of the respondents identifying as atheist or agnostic.

The survey asked participants to report on their histories of childhood physical and sexual abuse using standard psychological questionnaires. The researchers then added specialized questions to find out if any reported abuse involved religious elements. These elements included acts committed by religious leaders, acts taking place in a religious setting, or perpetrators explicitly using religious teachings to justify the harm.

Based on the survey responses, the researchers divided the participants into three distinct categories. The first group had no history of childhood abuse. The second group reported experiencing childhood abuse without any religious justification. The third group reported experiencing childhood abuse that was excused or facilitated by religious beliefs.

The participants also completed an array of established psychological tests to measure their current emotional well-being as adults. These tests evaluated current levels of depression, anxiety, and generalized stress. A separate questionnaire measured aggressive tendencies, hostility, and anger traits.

The respondents who endured religion-justified abuse showed the highest levels of adult distress across the board. Their scores for anxiety, depression, stress, and anger were substantially higher than those of individuals who experienced similar abuse in purely secular settings. Both abuse groups displayed worse mental health outcomes than the group with no abuse history.

The gap between the two abuse categories was especially wide when looking at anxiety symptoms. The odds of a participant having extreme anxiety as an adult were roughly four times higher if their early physical or sexual abuse featured religious justification. The researchers noted that this represents an enormous increase in psychological risk over standard forms of maltreatment.

The research team suggested several reasons why religious justification might amplify the harm of abuse. When perpetrators cite a holy text or claim to speak for a deity, they can instill a deep sense of shame and alienation in the victim. The survivor might feel that they have offended a divine power, which can make it much harder for them to recognize the abuse and seek outside help.

Additionally, abuse within a religious context can rob a survivor of their primary spiritual support system. A person who is victimized in a secular setting might successfully turn to a local congregation for comfort and healing. On the other hand, a person who is victimized by a youth pastor is far less likely to find peace in a religious environment.

The study also looked at how these outcomes differed between men and women. In the general population, mental health researchers often see a gendered pattern in psychological symptoms. Women tend to report higher rates of internalizing symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, where distress is directed inward. Men often lean toward externalizing symptoms, such as anger and physical aggression, where distress is directed outward.

The collected survey results mostly matched this typical gender pattern in the groups with no abuse history or secular abuse history. However, men who survived religion-justified abuse reported an unexpected spike in internalizing symptoms. Their levels of depression, anxiety, and stress rose far above standard expectations, a finding the research team flagged for future investigation.

The researchers pointed out several limitations to their study design. The data relied on people remembering and reporting events from their distant childhoods, which can sometimes introduce memory errors. The sample was gathered entirely from an online platform, meaning it might not flawlessly represent the broader demographics of the nation.

Because the study was openly advertised as a survey about religion and childhood abuse, it may have attracted people who were highly motivated to share negative religious experiences. This self-selection might have elevated the reported rates of abuse within the sample. The authors noted that the prevalence of abuse in this specific study was higher than the rates typically seen in national averages.

It is also important to remember that this type of observational research cannot prove a direct cause and effect. While religion-justified abuse is strongly associated with worse mental health in adulthood, the study design cannot rule out other underlying factors that might contribute to the differing levels of distress. Future studies that track young survivors over many decades would be needed to fully establish how these symptoms develop over a lifetime.

Despite these limitations, the research indicates that mental health professionals should pay much closer attention to the spiritual context of early trauma. Past surveys indicate that a vast majority of practicing therapists rarely ask about religious conflict during clinical sessions. Recognizing religion-justified maltreatment as a distinct category of harm could help clinicians provide better, more targeted support to survivors.

The study, “Religion-Justified Childhood Maltreatment and Adult Psychological Maladjustment,” was authored by Hannah Doctor, RaeAnn Anderson, John Paul Legerski, and Alan R. King.