The values, beliefs, and frameworks through which people make sense of the world are not merely philosophical abstractions. A major new scoping review published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology suggests that a person’s worldview, whether rooted in religious tradition, materialistic individualism, or spiritual interconnectedness, can have a measurable and meaningful impact on their mental health and well-being.
Researchers from Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Applied Sciences Leiden, and the University Medical Center Utrecht reviewed 110 studies drawn from four international databases, identifying 90 distinct worldviews examined in relation to mental health outcomes. The team used the Integrative Worldview Framework, a structured tool spanning five dimensions of belief, to classify and compare these worldviews across a wide range of cultural and religious contexts.
The findings reveal a striking pattern. People who hold traditional worldviews, including religious belief systems, Indigenous cultural practices, and collectivist values, tend to show more positive mental health outcomes. Religious coping mechanisms, in particular, appear to help individuals reframe distressing experiences through a lens of faith and communal support. Communities with strong ties to ancestry, land, and cultural identity, such as Maori, Pacific Islander, and various Indigenous North American groups, also demonstrated significant psychological resilience when these connections were preserved.
In contrast, the modern worldview, characterised by materialism, individualism, and a mechanistic view of reality, was more consistently associated with reduced well-being and an elevated risk of psychological disorders. Prioritising material wealth and social status appears to crowd out the kinds of meaningful relationships and intrinsic pursuits that sustain good mental health. Workaholism, burnout, and relational strain were among the consequences linked to highly individualistic orientations.
The integrative worldview, which emphasises self-transcendence, nature connectedness, and a unified sense of reality, emerged as broadly protective. Spirituality unattached to formal religion, ecospirituality, and mindfulness-based approaches were all associated with reduced depression and improved emotional well-being across diverse populations.
The postmodern worldview produced the most mixed results. While it showed promise for marginalised groups, particularly LGBTQ+ individuals who benefit from anti-oppressive and culturally affirmative practices, younger generations with strong environmental consciousness sometimes reported elevated psychological distress linked to climate anxiety.
Perhaps the most clinically significant finding was one the researchers had not initially set out to explore. Across all four worldview categories, living in congruence with one’s own beliefs emerged as a consistent protective factor for mental health. Whether a person held religious, secular, materialistic, or spiritual convictions mattered less than whether their daily life aligned with those convictions. Worldview instability, by contrast, was repeatedly linked to anxiety, existential distress, and poorer psychological outcomes.
The researchers argue that mental health practitioners would benefit from understanding and incorporating their clients’ worldviews into treatment. Culturally adapted therapy that respects a person’s meaning-making framework may produce significantly better results than a one-size-fits-all biomedical approach.
This has broader relevance for mental health policy too. As multicultural societies grow more diverse, recognising that well-being cannot be separated from belief may prove essential to building more equitable mental health care systems.