The Scientific Link of Spirituality and Mental Health

Last updated on: October 5, 2023 at 3:02 pm by Melissa Ingoldsby

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The Scientific Link of Spirituality and Mental Health 2023-10-05T15:02:33-04:00 Melissa Ingoldsby

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Graphic from the Skylight website

Your link to Spirituality Can Boost Your Immunity & Cortisol Levels

The Radiant Foundation, which operates and provides mental health support and wellness through an app called Skylight: Spiritual Self-Care, has based their efforts on scientific studies and research. This app has been launched with the aim to provide (according to the app page located here), instant access to daily spiritual wellness with short, simple exercises that generate deep love, strength, and healing.

World Mental Health Day is on October 10th of 2023, and for the overwhelming majority of people, we tend to overlook these mental health issues on a daily basis as we are increasingly busy with family, careers, education and other social activities. The app focuses on helping people on the go, as you can take part in the Skylight app’s short and simple exercises to improve your anxiety, stress, emotional and physical health. This is an excellent strategy for improving and boosting mental health awareness and truly recognizing that stress is something we can all manage, even when we seem to have no control over our lives or schedules.

In an extensive study of 1,700 adults that Duke University Medical Center conducted, the results showed that those who practice religion had better immune function, and in general, can help keep your immune system regulated over time. Another study done by Journal of Health Psychology shows that regular religious and spiritual practice in your community and daily life can reduce the “stress hormone”, cortisol, with more frequency of prayer and individual or family worship activities. Coinciding with the study published by Skylight, the tools and resources that their app provides can overall lead to less stress, sleep issues and other mental health challenges.

Graphic from the Skylight website

The Tech Age Allows Gen Z and Millennials more focus on their spiritual needs

According to the Skylight study, 77% of Gen Z consider themselves spiritual, and 51% of millennials report feeling a deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being at least once per week [11,12]. Additionally, more than two-thirds (64%) of adult GenZennials (ie, ages 18-35 years) in the US report consuming web-based content related to religious or spiritual beliefs, values, ideas, or practices [13].

I can personally see that these published results, especially the fact that the Skylight app caters to the Gen Z and Millennial generation, why this particular program would be beneficial to helping young adults with spiritual development and growth, to focus on overall mental wellness.

Personal meditation and mental health mindfulness with a Spiritual perspective is the best of both worlds

The Skylight app offers a myriad of different approaches to spiritual meditation and mental wellness. It incorporates music, yoga, prayer, mindful movement, intention setting, and meditation with spirituality in mind.

I can personally say that similar interactive meditation tools (on meditation apps) that I have seen used by family members and close friends have been effective and extremely useful. I can see that with the newer generations, using technology aligned with spiritually focused and prayer based approaches to be a significant step toward understanding how religion and spirituality can affect our state of mind.

I feel that if more apps and online services had spirituality, faith and prayer intermingled with mental health wellness, it could truly make a huge difference to a great many people, young and old. We tend to put the weight of everyday stress, anxiety and mental health issues on the back burner. With these new spiritual apps focusing on supporting a healthier sleep pattern, overall thinking in regard to healthy alignment to focus your energy on positive thoughts and an overall sense of balance in your life that can lead you towards a greater understanding of your purpose and drive.
I hope you and your family and friends find solace in these new opportunities to advance our understanding of mental health issues such as suicide prevention, depression and anxiety. These topics can be tough to navigate personally but with more information and research, we can gather the right answers and resources to help ourselves and our loved ones. For more in depth information on the Skylight website and their impact throughout the scope of spirituality and mental health, here is the article regarding their study.

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About Melissa Ingoldsby

Melissa Ingoldsby is a 32 year old author for Resurgence Novels of her debut horror drama I am Bexley. She lives in the STL region and is avid reader of mystery, romance and horror, a cinema fan and part time writer for Vocal and has many self published books on Amazon. You can read more about the author here.

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