The Only Group to See Mental Health Improve During the Pandemic?
New Gallup Data: Weekly church attendance key difference between highest and lowest mental health
Published in
3 min readDec 8, 2020
In the latest annual survey on mental, emotional, and physical health, Gallup found self-assessments at a 20-year low. But faith helps?
- Americans who attend religious services weekly were the only demographic group to see their mental health improve in 2020: 46 percent rated their mental health “excellent’’ in November 2020, a 4 percentage point improvement over 2019.
- The least religious Americans who seldom/never attend religious services saw one of the greatest drops: Just 29 percent rated their mental health excellent this year, a 13 percentage point drop from 2019 when 42 percent felt “excellent.’’
- Those in-between attending services “nearly weekly’’ or “monthly” had nearly as big of a drop in well-being, with 35 percent rating their mental health excellent in 2020, a 12-percentage point drop from 2019 when 47 percent rated their mental health excellent.
- That’s a 17 percentage point gap between the most and least religious,
