Religious Commitment, Spirituality, and Attitudes Toward God as Related to Psychological and Medical Help-Seeking: The Role of Spiritual Bypass

Spiritual bypass denotes a process by which an individual avoids painful psychological experiences by using spirituality as a defense. Although spiritual bypass is often detected within psychological treatment, it has only recently been studied empirically. In the current study, we extend the study of spiritual bypass by testing (a) its associations with religious commitment, spirituality, attitudes toward God, and psychological as well as medical help-seeking attitudes and (b) direct and indirect relationships using bias-corrected, boot-strapped confidence intervals using a model recommended by Hayes (2018). In Study 1, we surveyed 265 community-based adults recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Religious commitment and spirituality were directly related to attitudes toward psychological help-seeking. However, these relationships were indirectly associated with spiritual bypass. In Study 2, we surveyed 199 undergraduate students and found that attitudes toward God (i.e., positive attitudes toward or disappointment and anger with God) were related to medical help-seeking attitudes. Likewise, these relationships were indirectly associated with spiritual bypass. The implications were that (a) religious and spiritual variables relate to help-seeking attitudes; (b) religious and spiritual associations with help-seeking are both directly and indirect associated with spiritual bypass, and additional research is needed to uncover precise conditions under which spiritual bypass might or might not causally affect these relationships (i.e., investigate potential moderators and mediational effects); and (c) in practice, spiritual bypass can be an important patient quality to consider in relation to an individual's attitudes toward and perhaps benefit from psychological help.