>Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.
www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/content/76/12/1225.full.pdf

>People with no religious affiliation are at an elevated risk with people who are religiously affiliated.
>People with high levels of general religious involvement, organizational religious involvement, religious salience, and intrinsic religious motivation are atreduced risk for depressive symptoms and depressive disorders
>Longitudinal research is sparse, but suggests that some forms of religious involvement might exert a protective effect against the incidence and persistence of depressive symptoms or disorders.
www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aap/twr/1999/00000002/00000002/art00008

>The spiritual and religious group had less distress and less mistrust than the religious-only group (p < .05 for both).
>Moreover, individuals who perceive themselves to be both spiritual and religious may be at particularly low risk for morbidity and mortality based on their good psychological status and ongoing restorative activities.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12008795

>Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. Unaffiliated subjects were younger, less often married, less often had children, and had less contact with family members. Furthermore, subjects with no religious affiliation perceived fewer reasons for living, particularly fewer moral objections to suicide. In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/161/12/2303

>Own religious behaviour is positively correlated with individual life satisfaction. More unusually, average religiosity in the region also has a positive impact: people are more satisfied in more religious regions. This spillover holds both for those who are religious and for those who are not. The flipside of the coin is that a greater proportion of “atheists” (those who say they do not currently belong to any religious denomination) has negative spillover effects, for the religious and atheists alike.
http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/56/61/20/PDF/wp200901.pdf

>more recent research, with more representative samples and multivariate analysis, provides stronger evidence linking Judeo-Christian religious practices to blood pressure and immune function. The strongest evidence comes from randomized interventional trials reporting the beneficial physiological impact of meditation (primarily transcendental meditation). Overall, available evidence is generally consistent with the hypothesis that religiosity/spirituality is linked to health-related physiological processes--including cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and immune function
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12674818

>In most countries, religious people report better health; they say they have more energy, that their health is better, and that they experience less pain. Their social lives and personal behaviors are also healthier; they are more likely to be married, to have supportive friends, they are more likely to report being treated with respect, they have greater confidence in the healthcare and medical system and they are less likely to smoke.
http://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/Religion_and_Health_All_August09.pdf

>There is mounting scientific evidence of a positive association between religious involvement and multiple indicators of health.
>The strongest evidence exists for the association between religious attendance and mortality, with higher levels of attendance predictive of a strong, consistent and often graded reduction in mortality risk.
https://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/186_10_210507/wil11060_fm.pdf

>Very religious Americans are more likely to practice healthy behaviors than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious.
>The most religious Americans score a 66.3 on the Gallup-Healthways Healthy Behavior Index compared with 60.6 among those who are moderately religious and 58.3 for the nonreligious.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145379/Religious-Americans-Lead-Healthier-Lives.aspx

>Religious involvement was significantly associated with lower mortality (odds ratio = 1.29; 95% confidence interval: 1.20-1.39), indicating that people high in religious involvement were more likely to be alive at follow-up than people lower in religious involvement.
http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/mmccullough/Papers/rel_mort_meta.pdf

>Religious people are 25 percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money (91 percent to 66 percent) and 23 points more likely to volunteer time (67 percent to 44 percent).
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6577

>An impression based on a vote-counting method of reviewing studies on religion and personality is that religiosity is associated only with low Psychoticism (or high Agreeableness and Conscientiousness), while unrelated to the other Eysenck's or Big Five factors. This meta-analytic review of studies on religion and the Five Factor Model revealed that, in addition to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, religiosity (today?) is related to Extraversion. Interestingly, while Openness is negatively related to religious fundamentalism (weighted mean r=−0.14, P<0.01) and, to some extent, intrinsic-general religiosity (r=−0.06, P<0.01), it is positively related to measures of open or mature religiosity and spirituality (r=0.22, P<0.0001). The meta-analysis also indicated that extrinsic religiosity is followed by high Neuroticism, whereas open-mature religiosity and spirituality reflect Emotional Stability.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886900002336

>Results from a series of multilevel analyses indicate that church attendance (the frequency of attending religious services) has significant inverse effects on nondrug illegal activities, drug use, and drug selling among disadvantaged youths.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820000096371

>In healthy participants, there is a strong, consistent, prospective, and often graded reduction in risk of mortality in church/service attenders. This reduction is approximately 25% after adjustment for confounders. Religion or spirituality protects against cardiovascular disease, largely mediated by the healthy lifestyle it encourages.
digilib.bc.edu/reserves/th707/stcl/th70713.pdf

>Individuals who report attending religious services once a month or more (just over 50 percent of the population) have a 30–35 percent reduced risk of death over a 7.5 year follow-up period after adjusting for potential confounding factors. Consistent with prior research, 20–30 percent of this effect may be explained by better health behaviors (especially physical activity) among regular service attendees.
hsb.sagepub.com/content/45/2/198.short

>Religious influence and perceived negative consequences of smoking were protective against ever smoking for both genders (OR=0.7, 95% CI=0.5–0.9; OR=0.8, 95% CI=0.7–0.9, respectively).
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13557850310001631722

>Relative to their peers, religious youth are less likely to engage in behaviors that compromise their health (e.g., carrying weapons, getting into fights, drinking and driving) and are more likely to behave in ways that enhance their health (e.g., proper nutrition, exercise, and rest).
heb.sagepub.com/content/25/6/721.short

>public religiosity had a significant effect on effective birth control at first sexual intercourse and, for females, for having ever been pregnant.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953603000960

>Persons with autistic spectrum disorder were much more likely than those in our neurotypical comparison group to identify as atheist or agnostic
palm.mindmodeling.org/cogsci2011/papers/0782/paper0782.pdf

>To be sure, all of these explanations are important, but the list is incomplete. George, Larson, Koenig, and McCullough (2000) surmised that only 35% to 50% of the relationship between religiousness and various measures of health and well-being could be explained on the basis of the explanatory variables such as social support, health behaviors, and coping.
psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/135/1/69/

>Results indicate that religious fathers are more involved fathers and that they report higher quality relationships; this is true for both married and divorced fathers.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00382.x/full

>Persons with autistic spectrum disorder were much more likely than those in our neurotypical comparison group to identify as atheist or agnostic
palm.mindmodeling.org/cogsci2011/papers/0782/paper0782.pdf

>To be sure, all of these explanations are important, but the list is incomplete. George, Larson, Koenig, and McCullough (2000) surmised that only 35% to 50% of the relationship between religiousness and various measures of health and well-being could be explained on the basis of the explanatory variables such as social support, health behaviors, and coping.
psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/135/1/69/

>Results indicate that religious fathers are more involved fathers and that they report higher quality relationships; this is true for both married and divorced fathers.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00382.x/full