Westmont College

BACKGROUND:We know relatively little about how mental health varies across countries around the world or among demographic groups in diverse nations and cultures. METHODS:The current study addresses these issues by analyzing symptoms of depression and anxiety using data from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), an international, nationally-representative survey of 202,898 individuals from 22 geographically, economically, and culturally diverse countries collected in 2022-2023. RESULTS:Here we show that proportions of individuals with substantial symptoms of depression range from 0.14 in Poland to 0.50 in the Philippines. These two countries report the lowest and highest substantial symptoms of anxiety as well (0.13 and 0.48, respectively). Lower-income, non-Western countries tend to have higher proportions of both outcomes compared with higher-income, predominantly Western nations. Symptoms of depression and anxiety also vary across age, gender, marital status, education, employment status, religious service attendance, and immigration status in one or more countries. The results of random effects meta-analyses show that several demographic factors are significant predictors of both outcome variables when the results for all 22 countries are pooled. CONCLUSIONS:While being mindful of varying cultural contexts and possible translation and interpretive issues with the survey questions, the results suggest substantial variations in symptoms of both depression and anxiety across nations and key demographic groups. This work lays the foundation for future longitudinal GFS studies of mental health from a cross-national and global perspective.

This essay is an epilogue to a collection of essays focused on learning from the past and envisioning the future of the Protestant Spiritual Formation Movement. These essays comprise a supplemental issue of the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care devoted to this topic. The supplemental issue begins with a co-authored article that traces the Protestant Spiritual Formation Movement socio-historically across three waves and anticipates the contours of a fourth wave. That article is followed by eight retrospective essays from key organizational leaders reflecting on their organizations’ roles in the movement and seven prospective essays from Christian formation thought leaders envisioning the movement’s future. This epilogue does not attempt to summarize the prior discussion, but rather highlights the importance of individuals and groups doing so for themselves as an act of spiritual theology and corporate discernment. Furthermore, this essay points to the importance of intellectual virtues and reliable sources of knowledge in epistemically careful discernment.

BACKGROUND:Relatively little research has examined the associations between childhood experiences and subsequent adult self-rated health in diverse countries and cultures around the world using nationally representative data. METHODS:The current study addresses this limitation by analyzing data from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), an international survey of 202,898 individuals from 22 countries collected in 2022-2023. Associations between a measure of self-rated physical health and a variety of childhood experiences and characteristics including parent-child relations, parent marital status, income, abuse, feeling like an outsider, health, immigration, religious service attendance, year of birth, and gender were examined using a random effects meta-analysis. RESULTS:Findings from the pooled analysis of the 22 countries combined in the meta-analysis showed that all childhood variables except parental marital status and immigration were associated with self-rated physical health in adulthood. Results varied across individual countries, but each childhood characteristic, including marital status and immigration, was associated with adult self-rated physical health in at least one country. E-values showed that many of these relationships were fairly robust against confounding from unmeasured covariates. CONCLUSIONS:Findings suggest that childhood experiences and characteristics are associated with adult self-rated physical health in countries around the world. They also demonstrate considerable variation in these associations across nations and cultures, inviting further exploration and examination.

This essay offers a pastoral-theological vision of Christian spiritual formation centered on Christ being formed in individuals and communities for the sake of the world. Drawing from Scripture and the author’s formation across Pentecostal, evangelical, contemplative, and justice-oriented traditions, it argues that formation is not a set of techniques but a lifelong reorientation around the Spirit-dependent way of Jesus in community and mission. Through three formative phases—urban immersion, integrative discipleship, and practices of vulnerability, contemplation, and differentiation—the essay highlights the inseparability of emotional health, communal confession, and encounter with the Holy Spirit in mature Christian life. It contends that formation is always occurring and names contemporary malformations shaping the church, particularly politicized, racialized, and compartmentalized discipleship.