Religious Orientation and Its Relationship to Suicidality: A Study in One of the Least Religious Countries

The relationship between religious orientation and suicidality can be more complex in samples of low religious rate. The present study was conducted in China, one of the least religious countries, with the purpose of exploring different aspects of religious orientation and their relationships to suicidality. Among a university sample of 2074 respondents, 122 respondents reported being religious and responded to our measures of religious orientation and suicidality. Extrinsic religious orientation, while being distinct from intrinsic religious orientation, could be subdivided into personally-oriented and socially-oriented dimensions to predict suicidality in our sample. Results from regression analysis showed that respondents with higher intrinsic religious orientation and lower personally-oriented extrinsic religious orientation are more likely to have lower suicidality. These findings support that intrinsic orientation is embodied with positive outcomes whereas extrinsic orientation is embodied with negative outcomes. It is noteworthy that socially-oriented extrinsic religious orientation did not predict suicidality in our sample, as it was speculated that the role of socially-oriented extrinsic religious orientation cannot function when there are few religious people to socialize with in the community.