Leaving the Flock: Parent-Child Discordance in Religious Fundamentalism and Its Relationship to Psychological Distress

Religion is an important aspect to many people’s lives. Prior research surrounding religion and how it affects people psychologically has shown that it can have both a positive, and under certain circumstances, negative impacts. However, prior research largely neglects differences between specific faith groups and ignores individual beliefs and practices. The current research sought to fill in the gap by investigating whether fundamentalist religious beliefs affect mental health outcomes. Specifically, I investigated whether differences in parental-child fundamentalist beliefs are predictive of negative mental health outcomes in traditional-aged college students. Participants were asked to fill out the Revised Religious Fundamentalism scale for both themselves and their parents. They were also asked to complete the Depression, Stress, and Anxiety Scale for themselves, along with other measures of religious beliefs, behaviors, and struggles. I predicted that participants who held low fundamentalist beliefs, but had parents who were high in fundamentalism, would be the most likely to have high levels of psychological distress. This hypothesis was not supported by the analyses.<p></p>