{"id":26943,"date":"2015-08-18T14:27:20","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T12:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/?p=26943"},"modified":"2026-01-22T13:50:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T12:50:22","slug":"going-to-church-to-the-mosque-or-to-the-synagogue-has-a-good-influence-on-the-mental-health-of-the-elderly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/going-to-church-to-the-mosque-or-to-the-synagogue-has-a-good-influence-on-the-mental-health-of-the-elderly\/","title":{"rendered":"Going to church, to the mosque or to the synagogue has a good influence on the mental health of the elderly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to a study conducted by Dutch and British researchers from <strong>Erasmus MC<\/strong> and the <strong>London School of Economics<\/strong>, attending a worship place may be a\u00a0 factor for <strong><em>\u201csustained happiness\u201d.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_26945\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26945\" style=\"width: 580px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Religion.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-26945\" src=\"http:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Religion-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"old man pray\" width=\"580\" height=\"435\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Religion.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Religion-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Religion-600x450.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-26945\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u00a9David Hensen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Attending a worship place to fight against loneliness<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Erasmus MC<\/strong> and the <strong>London School of Economics<\/strong> conducted a 4-year-long study on almost 9\u00a0000 Europeans aged above 50 years old: the study delt with social life of the elderly and depression. <strong>It concluded that the only activity linked to \u201csustained happiness\u201d would be attending a worship place.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Dr. Mauricio Avendano<\/strong>, one of the researchers, explains that: <em>\u201cThe church appears to play a very important social role in keeping depression at bay and also as a coping mechanism during periods of illness in later life. It is not clear to us how much this is about religion per se or whether it may be about the sense of belonging and not being socially isolated\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Results also focused on the fact that belonging to a religious group has a very good influence on mental health; they sometimes have an even better influence than practicing some other sport activities, volunteering or even joining a political organisation.<\/p>\n<p>There have been several studies that have shown the benefits of social activities on the mental health of the elderly. Instead, none of them precisely analysed which kind of activity would be better. \u00a0Dr. Avendano explains that according to their research, some activities have better results than others. It is the case of attending a worship place. Going to church, to the mosque or to the synagogue have more sustainable effects than other type of social activities.<\/p>\n<h2>In Europe, there is no link between depression and weather<\/h2>\n<p>The study also reveals other data at the European level. <strong>European elderly people living in Southern European countries are more likely to fall into depression than those living in the Nordic countries, or even in Western ones<\/strong>. Researchers concluded that depression is not that influenced by the weather, but more by financial security and social relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to a study conducted by Dutch and British researchers from Erasmus MC and the London School of Economics, attending a worship place may be a\u00a0 factor for \u201csustained happiness\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":26945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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to a study conducted by Dutch and British researchers from Erasmus MC and the London School of Economics, attending a worship place may be a\u00a0 factor for \u201csustained happiness\u201d.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48646,"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26943\/revisions\/48646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silvereco.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}