NEW YORK — Jewish elderly are twice as likely to show signs of depression than Catholics, according to a recently released study.
The study, by Dr. Gary Kennedy, a professor of psychiatry at from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, concluded that religious preference and attendance are linked to depression.
Less than 10 percent of Catholics showed signs of depression compared with 20 percent of Jews and 12 percent of others.
Depression among Jews who emigrated from Russia and Poland reached up to 30 percent.
The study was conducted in the Bronx, N.Y., among 1,855 randomly selected Medicare recipients who expressed religious preference. Some 30 percent were Jews.
Almost 75 percent of Catholics surveyed said they attended religious services, compared with 20 percent of Jews and 38 percent of others.
“Failure to attend religious services predicted depression among the Catholics, not the Jewish sample,” said Kennedy.
Catholics regard service attendance as more of a “moral imperative” than Jews and many Jews will only attend the local synagogue if it serves their denomination — Reform, Conservative or Orthodox, the study stated.
The trauma of the Holocaust may also contribute to the higher level of depressive symptoms in Jews, because many of the elderly are of Eastern European background, the study added.