Spiritual and Religious Resources in African American Women

Abstract

Many women experience depressive symptoms after birth, and rates among African Americans are as high as 40 percent. Spirituality and religiosity are valued in African American communities, but their relevance to new mothers has not been empirically tested. We examined effects of religiosity and spirituality on trajectories of depressive symptoms during the year following childbirth. Data were collected by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD Community and Child Health Network (CCHN) focused on maternal-child health disparities. The sample consisted of 702 low SES African American predominantly Christian women. Participants were interviewed in their homes throughout the year following a birth. Spirituality and religiosity each independently predicted changes in depressive symptoms with low levels predicting increases over time. Effects of religiosity were mediated by a woman’s spirituality. Religiosity and spirituality functioned as significant, interrelated protective factors in this study which provides novel insight about lower income African American women following birth.

“The Awesomeness and the Vastness of Who You Really Are:” A Culturally Distinct Framework for Understanding the Link Between Spirituality and Health for Black Sexual Minority Men

“…Our findings suggest that an optimal worldview may impact mental health through emotional regulation. This finding is consistent with previous research (Cheadle et al, 2015). Participants' emotional regulation was enacted through spiritually informed cognitive re/appraisal, emotional coping, behavior change, and social support utilization.…”

“…Research with predominately or exclusively White American samples and (presumed) heterosexual Black American samples has contributed greatly to the understanding of the underlying mechanisms that explain the associations between spirituality and health. Some researchers have identified social, behavioral, psychological, and biological mechanisms that mediate the relationship between spirituality and health (Cheadle et al, 2015;Seybold, 2007). For example, empirical evidence suggests that spirituality may impact health by increasing tangible and instrumental support (Chatters et al, 2002) and general levels of social support and integration (Barnes & Hollingsworth, 2020;Le et al, 2016).…”

“…For example, empirical evidence suggests that spirituality may impact health by increasing tangible and instrumental support (Chatters et al, 2002) and general levels of social support and integration (Barnes & Hollingsworth, 2020;Le et al, 2016). Spirituality may promote spiritual behaviors (e.g., prayer and spiritual rituals) that induce alterations in one's internal emotional and physiological state (e.g., equanimity and inner peace; Cheadle et al, 2015). In addition, studies have suggested that higher levels of spirituality are associated with better diet, exercise, and health practices (Ellis et al, 2015).…”

Postpartum Depressive Symptoms Following Consecutive Pregnancies

“…In addition, the large and psychometrically strong set of measures available in this dataset is valuable for testing stress mediation. Although this paper does not focus on resilience, another CCHN paper examined postpartum depression among African American mothers (Cheadle, et al, 2015), indicating that resilience factors, spirituality and religiosity, predict lower risk of PPD.…”

Examining the Impact of Maternal Health, Race, and Socioeconomic Status on Daughter’s Self-Rated Health Over Three Decades

“…Perceived discrimination due to one's race or ethnicity has negative consequences for self-esteem, depressive symptoms, physical health, and health behaviors (Pascoe & Richman, 2009). On the other hand, African American women are likely to have more support within their social networks, oftentimes through more tight-knit family connections and religious communities-factors that could be protective against especially stress-related conditions (Cheadle et al, 2015;Paranjape & Kaslow, 2010). Both risk and protective factors likely have the potential to impact the self-rated health in African American compared with White mother-daughter relationships and could contribute to or moderate cumulative inequalities in health outcomes across these two groups.…”