(PS7-C51) Maladaptive Religious and Non-religious Coping Mediates the Association Between Obsessive-compulsive Symptoms and Depression in Religious Hispanic Young Adults

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a debilitating psychological disorder that causes emotional distress to a broad population in the United States. Prior research has stated that OCD and obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms are often comorbid with depression. With severe impairment by OC symptoms, individuals may select maladaptive coping strategies out of desperation. For some OC sufferers, the concept of religion and spirituality has a strong connection with their OC symptoms. Such individuals tend to experience extreme fear and believe in punishment for their impure thoughts and compulsions. Consequently, they turn their religion into maladaptive coping strategies. This sequence likely leads to further negative emotional experiences such as depression. Limited research has examined the roles of maladaptive religious and non-religious coping strategies in the association between OC symptoms and depression, particularly in minority individuals, such as Hispanic individuals. The current study examined the hypothesis that the relationship between OC symptoms and depression would be mediated by maladaptive religious and non-religious coping. The study also examined adaptive coping to identify potentially differential roles of adaptive and maladaptive coping in the association.

Method

249 Hispanic students, consisting of 35 males and 214 females, who identified themselves as Christian completed demographic questions, the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R), Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ9) for depression, Brief COPE (BCOPE), and the Religious COPE (Maladaptive and Adaptive subscales) online. The BCOPE Active Coping, Planning, and Positive Reframing subscales were aggregated to create an adaptive coping scale, and the Distraction, Denial, and Self-Blame subscales, to create a maladaptive coping scale. A series of mediation analyses were performed using PROCESS (Hayes, 2022). OCI-R total was the predictor, and depression was the criterion of the model. The model tested a coping scale as a mediator one at a time. 

Results

The association between OC symptoms and depression was significant, which was partially mediated by maladaptive religious coping (B =.168, p < .01) and by maladaptive non-religious coping (B = .539, p < .01). The association was not mediated by either adaptive religious coping (B = .070, p = .30) or adaptive non-religious coping (B = -.601, p = .21).

Discussion

The current study targeted Hispanic individuals who are, underrepresented in mental health research and service. The results largely supported our hypothesis. Increased use of maladaptive religious or non-religious (or both) coping strategies in response to OC symptoms might be one possible mechanism that explains a high comorbidity between OC symptoms and depression. The results highlight the importance of assessing both religious and non-religious coping in religious Hispanic individuals with OC symptoms. Interventions for such Hispanic individuals may target OC symptoms as well as maladaptive coping strategies they tend to employ. The study used cross-sectional data, this design does not address true directionality between OC symptoms and depression. Future research should address the model in a longitudinal design.