Anxiety and depression correlate. BDI and BAI can be useful.

PTSD goes with nightmares.

Dear Ian,

It is difficult to have objective data on anxiety. Almost impossible to be objective about anxiety. Asking questions is probably the worst approach and maximizing subjectivity. Any question biases its answer. Everybody dramatizes its situation and the less stable is a person and the more subjective the person is and the more likely the questions will biaise the answer such person will answer.

So instead of getting data on very suggesting/subjective questions, get the data on suicide rate by country and correlate this with the religiosity data. Compares country to each other and compare religious population with non-religious population within a country and correlate their life expectancy, their suicidal rate, their alcoolism rate, their drug (LEGAL AS WELL AS ILLEGAL) consumption rate, the rate of death by alcool, the rate of death by drug consequences. Check the rate of severe psychological syndrome, compare the rate of those that commit to have their body surgically transformed to mimic the other sex, compare the rate of self-mutilation, the rate of anorexia, the rate high overweight, etc, etc. and correlate all these statistic with religious practices. All these statistic are readily available in many countries. There is also a lot of papers which has done some of these studies already and so a litterature review has to be done first.

The question of fear of death versus religiosity is also an interesting one to explore.

Joseph Campbell had identify the fear of death as an uniquely human phenomena in Nature stemming from our unique capacity of language which implies that we cannot escape the reality that our life will necessarily end. Campbell saw religion having its source into the absolute human needs to overcome this nihilistic conclusion that our personal life will end by realising that it continues throw our participation to our society. If Campbell was partially right about religion the fear of death is most probably correlate to religiosity of a person. Western societies took a turn in the sixties toward secularism, drop in religious practices and the glorification of the youth. Become older was not cool anymore. This is a kind of fear of death by trying to cling to the apparence of youth, adopting yourth lifestyle as long as possible, delaying the time of marriage and having children atre form of fear of death in such nihilistic culture. The 19th century had seen the appearance of these nihilistic tendencies only into the rich strata of societies but only in the sixties this became mainstream into the middle class. So fear of death, nihilism and religious practices are likely correlated.

Regards,

- Louis

Death is a companion of our life & he has to remain with us till our final journey. As human being we have our life with ambition , suggestive guideline related with our intuition this makes us what we are & which mode we have to frame our life.

Religion is our primary stone of our life & it is which every human being in which mode he has to frame his life in a worthy manner so that it may help him to move for his final journey in a very helpful & comfortable manner .

This is my personal opinion

In my humble opinion, the whole of three words are beautiful in terminology but these are challenging in conceptual framework. At first, we should know that what we are looking for and how we can achieve them as ideal. However, despite of all the existing adversities, which are the main/major cause of human beings, the name and remembrance of God is still the greatest driving force of man kinds in passing through different sufferings/difficulties in the universe.

Thanks Hamid