Summary
A robust body of evidence supports the idea that personal spiritual practices and religious community involvement can foster stronger mental health—reducing depression, anxiety, and suicide—by offering meaning, support, structure, and interconnectedness, despite often being portrayed negatively in popular media.
Opinion
I like this article because it actually takes religion on its own terms, talking about how lonely individuals can "commune" with their creator. That doesn't talk directly about the internal experience of grace, heavenly light, or a sense that we are being guided by some being far greater than ourselves, but it doesn't nullify it either.
That's pretty good, coming from a mainstream American university like Yale. So many "academic" or "psychological" perspectives completely overlook the spiritual in religion, emphasizing the personal and community benefits.
God knows, when I tried to talk about "spirituality" in a Canadian graduate program, I was openly mocked and professionally shot down by the professor who led the seminar. Maybe these days as these folks are getting older, they're starting to realize that I had something to say. But then again, maybe not. As the old saying goes, you can take a horse to water but you cannot make them drink.
As for Freud's take on religion, the article is correct. Freud saw religion and religious ideas as delusions. Sometimes relatively harmless, other times unhealthy. I guess Freud missed his own blind spot—the delusion that God does not exist!
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