Abstract
Adolescent mental health challenges, including suicide ideation, depression, and anxiety disorders, are significant public health concerns. This study explores the role of Christian faith in overcoming these challenges among adolescents. The target population comprises adolescents actively engaged in Christian practices. The paper aim to investigate how engagement in practices such as prayer, church attendance, and Bible reading influences anxiety and depression levels. This study utilizes a quantitative method and the size of the population of 300 teenagers. To that end, the study includes specific parameters that measure eg praying frequency, message intensity, and quality as well as pain and depression assessments. Among the statistical analyses, there will be the regression analysis to examine the logical links between religion and mental health. The proposed outcomes identify that the level of Christian practices practice will be inversely proportional to the levels of anxiety and depression noted in the younger respondents. The future research projects must, therefore, endeavor to focus more on the precise way the Christian faith influences the adolescents’ mental health.
Introduction
Teen mental well-being is a growing problem in many countries, both non-fatal and fatal being among the leading issues seen in adolescents. While there are many interventions available to help mental health issues for adolescents these problems not fixed, which suggests that the multidimensional techniques are needed for the mental well-being of adolescents. This study aims to ascertain the effect of Christian faith in the area of youth mental health especially by considering possible extension of mental health among adolescents and the link between their varying levels of anxiety and depression.
A theory, which looks into this issue, is the theory of the religion coping, which claims that individuals in the process of stress or unpleasant events in their life turn to religion as a way to get help through this situation. Studies show a relationship between regular practicing of religion and a positive mental health in people, which gives a reason to believe that religious activities may play the role of the protection against mental health problems. Nevertheless, though there are some studies that reveal the link that exists between religion and mental wellness amongst the adults population, there is a notable absence of researches that attempt to uncover this relationship in the adolescent phase. However, a need is considered to conduct the additional research, which will reveal the mechanisms, through which Christian believe leads to mental health betterment of this group. Moreover, it is supposed that there are some mediators and moderators, linking the relations between Christian faith and mental health. Also, previously conducted researches usually look at general measurements of religiosity, but they don’t examine in details on religious practice or experience that may produce different mental health outcomes. It is essential that we begin to fill in the gaps of our knowledge to facilitate the development of intervention policy that permits the benefits associated to youth religious participation for the emotional wellness of adolescents. The research paper aims to answer questions that are with regard to the Christian faith and how it helps in mental health problems including suicide ideation, depression and anxiety among the adolescent development.
Literature Review
Theme 1: Character Development in Adolescents Growing in Christian Faith
Various researches envisage the spiritual growth they experience through their walk with Christ during their teen years. Goodman and Doyle (2020) conducted a longitudinal study of the mission of parents in the history of the faith process between 13 and 19 years old. They developed four categories regarding the connections between the students’ category based on either parents’ believing or their own religious progression. Research showed that strong parent-adolescent relations were characterized by high levels of integrating family religion’ practices into the everyday life and ability to sense the environment through physiological processes. Moreover, the religious practices of the family, including weekly family home evenings, family prayer, and scripture study, are all connected with more faith being transmitted from the parent to the adolescent (Goodman & Dyer, 2020). Leung and Li (2023) investigated the efficiency of a faith-based spiritual intervention that deals with depressive problems of an individual. Their time-limit study indicated that by, for example, restoring the connections with the divine and by experiencing forgiveness the symptoms increase and there is improved sense of self and community. The results demonstrate the vital role the religious activities play and interventions in the model of the character development of the teenagers representing the Christian spirit.
Theme 2: Effects of Prayer and Spiritual Formation
Research on the part of the prayer and spiritual formation on mental health, this in particular brand of the adolescents, focus on the ways they are important. Aggarwal et. al (2023) took a comprehensive literature review and meta-analysis to study the effectiveness of religiosity and spirituality in generalization of depression and anxiety among young people aged from 10 to 24 years. Their research has shown that the higher the level of negative coping such as avoiding religious activities, the greater the level of depressive symptoms in the future. However, those who continue to practice their religions, their spiritual wellbeing can be a shield to protect them from depression. Interventions with spiritual and religious attributes were usually helpful in reducing psychological disturbance among the young people (Aggarwal, March; Agharwal et al., 2023). Unlike the prior studies, Del Castillo et al. (2023) homed in on precisely the ties between mental health and the prayer of the Philippines Christian youth. In their qualitative work, researchers found that prayer was a resource for coping, which calmed their emotions, gave them hope, and often returned them to the source of their pain. The data revealed a clear connection as to how prayer can be an effective channel for achieving psychological stability in the life of a young Christian.
Theme 3: Family and Peer Influence on the Upbringing of Faith in Adolescents
The environment of faith in adolescents can be shaped by the family relationships and the links within the peer circles as well. Zhou and Tao (2023) explored intriguingly the way family intimacy impacts on the quality of adolescent peer relationships by assessing psychological capital and self-identity as the factors, which modify this association. The research showed that positive relationships between family members have something to do with a constantly improving connection between peers in adulthood. Also, among the family factors like parental conflict, family’s socioeconomic background, and different modes of communication are the major determinants of adolescents interactions with peers (Zhou & Tao, 2023). These authors also suggested that religious family practices like regular attendance of services at the congregation and having family discussion around values can be helpful in intergenerational faith transmission (Goodman & Dyer, 2020). It was shown that teenagers whose spiritual practice levels were high in families with high spiritual practices were more likely to have the same faith. eclectic research exemplifies that there is a complex interplay between families and peer effect on supplying religious development in born-again. Their parents must be encouraged as well as reliance on healthy peer relationships is a great advantage for them in their Christian practice.
Theoretical frameworks
The significant of faith, with the combination of family Christian life and religious attitude of adolescents, can be illustrated by the contribution of several relevant theoretical frameworks. Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model is useful in explaining the dynamics between parents and adolescents as well as in choosing various methods of influence because it focuses on the connection between proximal processes, individual traits, environmental contexts and time (El Zaatari and Maalouf, 2022). The mediation model aids to comprehend the interconnection of all the aspects of religious upbringing of parents, namely parental religiosity, internalizing and externalizing problems of children, and the sociocultural context, and how they interact to shape adolescent faith. Besides, Erik Erikson’s psychologist’s personality development theory shows how adolescence is the ideal time for young people to grow into individuals and test their spirituality and religious beliefs, giving them a sense of purpose and place (Orenstein & Lewis, 2022).
Conclusion
Literature review has unveiled several important factors that are deriving the clarifications of development of faith and religiosity among the teenagers of the Christian families. Illustrating study like Goodman and Dyer (2020) emphasizes that role of parents in religiosity transmission to their adolescent children is the most important and these adolescents’ religious practices depend on parent-adolescent relationships, parent religious practices and their quality. Leung and Li (2023) have given baseline evidence showing that the faith-based spiritual therapies help in reducing the depressive feelings among people who are suffering from depression and thus open the opportunity for incorporating the spirituality into mental health therapies. Furthermore, Aggarwal and colleagues (2023) systematically reviewed the literature and conducted a meta-analysis to elaborate on the complex nature of relationship between religiosity/spirituality and mental health outcomes in youth. This, thus, put a spotlight on the need for more research works to establish a causal relationship.
Nevertheless, researchers are progressing in overcoming these weak spots and filling in the missing pieces in the current picture of the link between weight and longevity. Many of the research projects follow the design of a cross-sectional study thus making it difficult to establish cause and effect and to know how teenage religious engagement may impact their mental health in the long term. Additionally, in the theoretical frameworks and findings, the inconsistencies are important warning signs of which no more partial and local models that integrate the various factors of development and faith of adolescents should be made. In order to brings these gaps to the fore, future research should focus on the moderating impact of group influence, culture, and players differing in religiousness on the connection between religious practices and the mental health in adolescents within the Christian families. An assumption that has us emphasize that the practice of religion, such as prayer, going to church and even reading the Bible, among the adolescents, may have a significant effect on their cases of anxiety and depression are the ones that we come up with. This hypothesis is therefore supported by the reviewed literature that describes relativistic scopes of religious practices as protective factors against poor mental health outcomes for adolescents.
References
Aggarwal, S., Wright, J., Morgan, A., Patton, G., & Reavley, N. (2023). Religiosity and spirituality in the prevention and management of depression and anxiety in young people: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC psychiatry, 23(1), 729.
Del Castillo, F. A., Del Castillo, C. D. B., & Koenig, H. G. (2023). Associations between prayer and mental health among Christian youth in the Philippines. Religions, 14(6), 806.
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Leung, J., & Li, K. K. (2023, July). Faith-Based Spiritual Intervention for Persons with Depression: Preliminary Evidence from a Pilot Study. In Healthcare (Vol. 11, No. 15, p. 2134). MDPI.
Orenstein, G. A., & Lewis, L. (2022). Eriksons stages of psychosocial development. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
Zhou, X., & Tao, K. (2023). Family intimacy and adolescent peer relationships: investigating the mediating role of psychological capital and the moderating role of self-identity. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1165830.
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