title: A Critical Comprehensive Review of Religiosity and Anxiety Disorders in Adults.
abstract: Over the past three decades, there has been increasing research with respect to the relation of religion and mental health disorders. Consequently, the current article aims to first provide a comprehensive literature review of the interplay between different domains of religiosity and a wide variety of categorical anxiety disorders in adults, and secondly, to uncover the major methodological flaws often yielding mixed, contradictory and unreliable results. The search was conducted using the PubMed/Medline database and included papers published between 1970 and 2012, under a rigorous set of inclusion/exclusion criteria. A total of ten publications were retained as part of the current study, and three main outcomes were identified: (1) certain aspects of religiosity and specific religious interventions have mostly had a protective impact on generalized anxiety disorder (40% of the studies); (2) other domains of religiosity demonstrated no association with post-traumatic stress disorder (30% of the studies); and (3) mixed results were seen for panic and phobic disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon, danyrkhalaf@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Dany R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Khalaf
authors.forename: Ludger F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Hebborn
authors.forename: Sylvain J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Dal
authors.forename: Wadih J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Naja
mesh_terms: D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D012069:Religion and Psychology