Definitions, symptoms and causes

Can religious factors reduce anxiety, by offering spiritual or social support and purpose in life, for example? Or do religious beliefs arouse anxiety, by encouraging guilt and worry over failure to carry out obligations?

There is a more specific question: does religion encourage perfectionism as a defence against anxiety? Particularly, does religion cause or exacerbate obsessive or compulsive behaviour or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)? This question will be discussed with examples from different religious traditions, particularly from Christianity, Islam and Judaism. These are traditions in which the most clinical and empirical work has been reported, and in which there can be ritual demands which call for a high degree of scrupulosity. Also, is there a possibility that religious people are likely to be perceived as more anxious and obsessional than people who are not religiously active?

Anxiety disorders are based on fear, and they show themselves in a variety of ways. As with other psychiatric conditions, there is “normal” and appropriate anxiety, being fearful or anxious as an appropriate response to a realistic danger, and there is uncontrollable and pathological anxiety, out of proportion to what is realistic.