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Episode 211: BYU’s Justin Dyer on mental health and the positive impact of temple attendance

Evidence suggests scripture study, family prayer, church attendance and belief in the restored gospel are supported by and supportive of temple attendance, which then connects to better mental health

Research from Brigham Young University looks at the relationship between temple attendance, religious practices, and mental health in youth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The evidence suggests scripture study, family prayer, church attendance and belief in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ are supported by and supportive of temple attendance.

Justin Dyer, a professor of religious education at BYU, joins this episode of the Church News podcast to talk about his findings that youth who attend the temple more often have better mental health, including lower levels of depression and anxiety.

Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.

Transcript:

Justin Dyer: If we’re going to the temple and we’re seeking the healing of the Savior and we’re seeking to serve Him, there’s service. Getting outside of oneself is a wonderful help to our mental health. Again, it’s a byproduct, because we begin to see a broader perspective when we can step back, expand our view, get a view of the whole plan of salvation and the role of the Savior in that; that can be incredibly, incredibly helpful. But certainly as part of a process in your life, that can be the pathway that I’m taking on that healing journey as I’m serving others, uniting families, gathering Israel on both sides of the veil, right? It’s going to facilitate our connecting with the Savior.

1:07

Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1:21

Mary Richards: I’m Mary Richards, a reporter with the Church News and guest hosting today’s Church News podcast. New research from Brigham Young University looks at the relationship between temple attendance, religious practices and mental health in Latter-day Saint youth. Evidence suggests scripture study, family prayer, church attendance and Restoration beliefs are supported by and supportive of temple attendance. Meanwhile, those who attend more often have better mental health, including lower levels of depression and anxiety.

Joining us to discuss his findings is Professor Justin Dyer, a professor of religious education at BYU who teaches classes on religion and family as well as graduate statistics. He currently researches how religion, family and mental health influence each other.

Welcome, Professor Dyer. Or can I call you Justin?

Justin Dyer: Please, please.

2:10

Mary Richards: Welcome to the Church News podcast.

Justin Dyer: Oh, it’s so wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mary Richards: Yes. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this field and this research.

2:18

Justin Dyer: Yeah. So, my graduate work and PhD work was all in marriage and family and family relationships and how those go. And I’ve always been really interested in what is it that creates human flourishing and what is it that helps us in our lives. And so as a professor, I came to Brigham Young University about 14 years ago and started teaching in the School of Family Life there. And then, after five years, they began the Eternal Family class at BYU. And that class is a wonderful one that helps students to understand the Church’s teachings on the family and how to have a good family.

A family sits on temple grounds.
A family sits on temple grounds. | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

And as I began to teach that course, a lot of the questions that would come up in that religion class setting was, “Well, how is religion for your mental health?” And, particularly, “How is being a Latter-day Saint related to mental health?” Because a lot of the assumptions of today on social media and all that seem to imply that, “Well, maybe being religious isn’t very good for you. Maybe all the stress and everything really isn’t all that great for you.” And that hadn’t been, until about nine years ago, an area of study for me, but then I began to engage in that area just to try and find that out. And what I initially found out is, well, we don’t have a lot on Latter-day Saints, but the general research on religion and mental health suggested that those who are engaged in religion have better mental health.

And this is actually something that we’ve been doing research on for quite some time, even back to 120 years ago, with Émile Durkheim. He looked at, well, how do different religious denominations differ in their suicide rates for what he was looking at, and supposed that, “Well, maybe theology and different practices relate to mental health differently for these groups.” And so we’ve been looking at this for a long time. And in fact, the last few decades, we’ve accumulated a lot of research on this. The research in general has suggested that the more religious a person is, the better their mental health is. And so me doing this research on temple attendance and Latter-day Saints, in one way, isn’t particularly surprising, because it fits really well within this very well-established body of research on religion and mental health. But what we haven’t done before is look at, “All right, let’s look at the particulars of temple attendance and see how that relates to mental health.”

A note on just Latter-day Saints in general, it’s found that in general, Latter-day Saints seem to have better mental health, and within the overall research on mental health and religion, that’s not particularly surprising, because Latter-day Saints tend to be really religious people, and so them being more religious, it’s not surprising that in general, you would see Latter-day Saints having better mental health. So that’s just kind of the overall research on religion and mental health. And then it’s been really nice in particular to look at Latter-day Saints and delve into adolescents as they develop and how do the various aspects of their religious lives connect with their mental health.

BYU Professor of Religious Education Justin Dyer speaks in the Marriott Center.
Justin Dyer, a professor in religious education at Brigham Young University, gives a campus devotional in the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah, on May 23, 2023. | Joey Garrison/BYU

5:21

Mary Richards: Yeah. I think so many parents, like myself — I have three teenagers — and youth leaders and bishops and so many are going to be so interested by this research, because of course we want to feel like our efforts are doing something, are bearing fruit, you know, and our efforts to have family prayer, to read scriptures with our children, to go ahead and set up appointments for them at the temple and get them there.

Even this last Wednesday, I had the alarm set for 6 a.m. and went and woke up my 13-year-old, and he was thinking, “Why am I doing this right now? Why am I going to the temple? It’s 6 in the morning. I could be sleeping.” And I could have said, “Oh, you’re right, you need sleep.” But no, I was like, “We’re going to the temple. It’s good for us. It’s good for you.” And he had a great experience, and I was grateful for that. If we could look at these numbers, I guess, because me thinking I can then go back to my teenagers and show, “Here’s the proof that it’s going to help you. That’s why I’m waking you up at 6 a.m.”

Tell us a little bit about what you saw and who you studied. These were Utah and Arizona youth in particular, right?

6:22

Justin Dyer: That’s right, yeah. So for this round, we wanted to get a good representative sample of Latter-day Saints. Nationally, that’s a little bit hard to do because we’re such low proportion of the population to other locations. So for this first round of data collection and looking into Latter-day Saints, which shows areas that are a little higher concentration of Latter-day Saints, so that we could get a good portion of them.

Let me go a little bit technical now, if you don’t mind, into this, and you can decide how much to put in. We wanted to get a really good random sample of individuals, so we worked with a national research firm that collects publicly available data, has information on over 80 million households in the United States. And so we asked them for a random sample of those within the areas we were interested in. So we got a random sample of households, and we also specified, “Hey, we want kids between the ages of 12 and 14.” Now, this is back in 2016 that we started this.

And so we got that random sample of households with kids those ages, and we sent them all letters, and we gave them a call. And we didn’t allow for, say, snowball sampling, where they could invite their friends or family to participate. We didn’t want that, because that decreases the randomness of it and makes the sample a little more similar. They could only participate if they were randomly chosen. So we really wanted to get as good a sample as we possibly could. That takes a little bit of effort, but BYU students, shout out to them. They’re amazing, and they really did the lion’s share of the work to get this really nice sample for us.

So yes, we’re in Utah and Arizona, and then with that sample of just over 1,000 kids — a little over half Latter-day Saints, the other half other religions, because we really wanted that comparison group. And so then since 2016, every other year, we’ve interviewed these kids. And so now, you know, 12 to 14 in the research report that we’re looking at here, those data went to 2022. We actually just barely finished the 2024 collection, and I’m very excited to dig into that. But what’s key in this is that we’re able to look at how people change over time.

In order to determine whether one thing causes another, well, you really do need an experimental design and all that. We can’t do that because you can’t randomly assign people to be Latter-day Saints or randomly assign a person to, you know, go to the temple, you don’t go to the temple for a year, you know. And so the best thing that we can do with this kind of observational behavioral research is simply track them over time and see how one thing influences change in another thing. We can’t ultimately determine causality, but this is about as close as we can get, and what we find really fits within the overall research, the most rigorous research on religion and mental health.

So, that’s kind of the outline of how we approached this research, is to see: How do these kids develop over time? What is it in their family life, in their religion, that impacts their mental health? And how does their mental health impact their family and religion?

9:16

Mary Richards: Yeah. And so looking at them starting when they’re 12 and then moving forward, talk about some of the things you saw as they grew older. If they were attending the temple more regularly when they were younger, weren’t they more likely to continue attending and then even be endowed when they were 18?

9:31

Justin Dyer: Yes, absolutely. Temple attendance had a very strong association; if they’re doing that early on, they’re more likely to stay a member of the Church, they’re more likely to attend church, they’re more likely to be endowed.

And in fact, what we found is that if you were attending the temple earlier on, and looking four years, projecting four years, in the future, those that were not attending at all, 33% of them disaffiliated from the Church four years later. And so we saw a drop-off of those who weren’t attending. However, if you were attending at least monthly, it’s 12% of those that disaffiliated four years later.

Still, you know, we wish we could keep everybody, but there seemed to be a real relationship between temple attendance and staying a member of the Church.

A young man and a young woman sit on the grounds of the Mount Timpanogos Utah Temple.
Youth sit on the grounds of the Mount Timpanogos Utah Temple in American Fork, Utah. | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

10:23

Mary Richards: You want to worship more because you believe, and your belief is strengthened as you worship? Back and forth?

Justin Dyer: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the things that we found, is we tried to understand, “Well, what is it about temple attendance that impacts whether or not they stayed in the Church?” And one of those things seemed to be Restoration beliefs; beliefs in the Book of Mormon, in modern-day prophets. And actually, as I found that in these data, it reminded me of when I was a teenager myself, and I was sitting in the baptistry, and I picked up a Book of Mormon, you know, that are just sitting there, and I was looking around at the holy work that was being done.

I was sitting in this beautiful, peaceful place. I was feeling the Spirit of the Lord. And I thought, “This is one of the fruits of the Restoration,” you know, thinking about Joseph Smith, this is one of the fruits. And that, for me as a teenager, actually really helped me. And I think the temple does particularly help with, say, beliefs about the Restoration, because it’s very unique to the Restoration. Nobody else in other religions are doing baptisms for the dead as we do, and so them having that kind of unique experience with a Restoration practice and Restoration doctrine seems to — from the research and from my own experience — really helps to connect us with the Restoration, with the Church, and helps us to stick in there.

11:53

Mary Richards: Yeah. That belief that the gospel was restored; that Joseph Smith and then prophets since have been commanded to build temples; that we should attend; that President Russell M. Nelson, our President and Prophet today, emphasizes the temple so beautifully with such invitations, really. I could say urging, but invitations for us to worship, to attend more often. And when you feel connected to that, there’s that connection to the temple and desire to go more, or that kind of back-and-forth relationship, I guess.

12:23

Justin Dyer: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s so well said. And with the overall research on religion and mental health, we — very sadly in our day — we have a crisis of mental health, rates of depression, anxiety, other things are increasing. And part of that certainly could be that we are better at diagnosing these things today. But it does seem to be the case that we are struggling more, particularly because suicide is increasing so substantially In the world today. And the loss of religion is very likely playing a role in that. We’ve decreased substantially in religiosity in society, while at the same time, mental health problems, suicide rates have greatly increased.

In fact, Harvard researcher Tyler VanderWeele has estimated that nearly 40% of the increase in the suicide rate could be attributed to the decrease of church attendance. And so when we see this temple attendance, perhaps when we see the research suggesting, at least, that temple attendance may be key in helping keep people connected to church, the emphasis that the leaders of the Church are putting on the temple nowadays is, on so many levels, such a beautiful, beautiful thing.

But as we’re talking about religion and mental health and temple attendance and mental health and all these things, what can happen, and what we social scientists tend to do, is be what we call reductive, and we reduce something down to just kind of this component parts. And that’s very useful. And I think in this conversation, we could find that, “Oh, there’s some utility in that.” But what can happen is we can be so reductive is that we lose the overall purpose. The purpose of being in the temple is to help to build eternal families and to gather Israel on both sides of the veil and to worship the Lord. That is so critical that we remember that in all of these details, we don’t get that overall purpose of the temple lost.

14:37

Some people might hear this and say, “Oh, OK, well, I just need to go to the temple more, and my major depressive disorder is going to go away, and I’m going to be cured of, you know, whatever it is.” And we’ve got to be very cautious about that. What we’re finding is, “Hey, there are some wonderful things that may be an outcome of temple attendance, but it’s certainly not going to be the outcome for every single person.

Sometimes it’s like thinking about exercise. Exercise is really good for mental health, but if somebody says, “I’m going to exercise, and my depression is going to disappear,” certainly exercising will be a good thing for that individual, on a lot of levels, but not necessarily it’s going to automatically make the depression disappear. Certainly a good thing to do, and, for most people, that is an effect, is to improve your mental health. But there are some people for whom that might not be the effect. Other people might struggle with certain aspects of perfectionism, or some people may experience obsessive-compulsive disorder — or the religious manifestation of that, scrupulosity — and they might hear this and say, “Oh, OK, I just have to go to the temple more.” And they might obsessively do that in a way to cure whatever difficulties that they’re experiencing.

Now, again, if, go again to the example of exercise, somebody with obsessive-compulsive disorder might exercise obsessively. Now, again, exercise is a good thing, but if we do it as part of some other difficulties that we might be experiencing and thinking that it’s going to have a particular effect, we’ll probably be disappointed in that. And so for most people that hear this and say, “Oh, going to the temple more could be good for my mental health,” for the most part, as what the research shows, that’s probably going to be the case. However, we do have to recognize individual differences within this, that not everybody is going to be affected in the same way. And even if we go to the temple and we don’t find the kind of mental health improvements, well, there’s larger purposes for going to the temple that we accomplish.

16:45

Mary Richards: Well, you know, I’m reading right from your research paper, and this is exactly what you were talking about here. You write that “the correlation between depression and temple attendance was significant and remained somewhat steady across time.” In other words, greater temple attendance was related to lower depression. And you talk about, though, that brush and correlation doesn’t take in personal experiences, which you were talking about.

But I love that a few paragraphs later, and throughout your research paper, you quote President Russell M. Nelson and his teachings on the temple. He said in April 2024 general conference, “The temple is the gateway to the greatest blessings God has in store for each of us,” and he encouraged Latter-day Saints to worship in the temple “as regularly as your circumstances permit,” because it is because of this greater purpose of being in the temple, right? Gathering Israel, worshipping, connecting with the Savior, having that covenant connection.

President Nelson said, “Nothing will help you more to hold fast to the iron rod than worshipping in the temple as regularly as your circumstances permit.” And so that covenant connection with the Savior and with our Heavenly Father, because the Savior is the Master Healer, right?

A family sits together on a bench outside the Raleigh North Carolina Temple.
A family sits together on a bench outside the Raleigh North Carolina Temple. | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

17:53

Justin Dyer: Oh, absolutely. And I love how President Nelson puts that — it’s the gateway, right? It’s going to facilitate our connecting with the Savior, with us making covenants with the Savior. It’s not the end, right? Going through the doors of the temple, sometimes they say, right, “We need to go to the temple. We need to have the temple go into us and through us.” And so if we do it just to check the box in terms of, “Oh, I went to the temple,” that’s probably not going to be very effective. If we’re going to the temple and we’re seeking the healing of the Savior, and we’re seeking Him, and we’re seeking to serve Him, there’s service. Getting outside of oneself is a wonderful help to our mental health.

Again, it’s a byproduct, right? We don’t serve people because, “All right, I’m trying to, you know, improve my mental health by doing some service,” but that’s a wonderful byproduct, often, is because we begin to see a broader perspective. Some mental health difficulties, our minds just narrow in on a single thing that we focus on, when we can step back, expand our view, get a view of the whole plan of salvation and the role of the Savior in that, that can be incredibly, incredibly helpful.

Again, none of this — I don’t want to, again, say that, automatically, your obsessive-compulsive disorder, your depression, is going to disappear — but certainly as part of a process in your life, and being able to step back and serve other people, that is a beautiful, beautiful thing and helps us to walk the pathway of healing. It might not be the healing exactly the moment I, you know, stepped in the temple, but that can be the pathway that I’m taking on that healing journey as I’m serving others, uniting families, gathering Israel on both sides of the veil and letting the people in the temple serve you along with that.

That’s one of the reasons why religion, we find, is so good for people, is those connections with other individuals, that reaching out and being reached out to is something that’s so critical in religion, and it’s part of what Alma says at the Waters of Mormon, where he talks about bearing one another’s burdens. “Oh, you want to come into the fold of Christ? Well, we need to bear one another’s burdens that they may be light. We need to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.” The Lord so wants us to be able to participate in this process of bearing one another’s burdens, and in the temple is a location where that can happen at a very personal, really special level.

20:53

Mary Richards: Let’s talk about what your research shows about getting teenagers to the temple. As a parent, so I have a missionary who’s 19 and a 16-year-old, a 13-year-old, and then our fourth son will be turning 12 next year, and so in the early months of next year, we hope to start his temple worship and attendance and doing baptisms and such.

What were some of the things that you found that then families can do that strengthens and supports temple attendance?

21:19

Justin Dyer: Well, we wish we had everything on what families were doing, but we have a few things, and they can give us some kind of indicator on what those things might be. So, for example, family prayer was huge in terms of predicting the youth’s temple attendance, particularly early on, right? That 12, 13, 14, 15, family prayer was very predictive. Now, that’s probably because it’s associated with families who do stuff together, right? Families who are engaged with religion together. So that’s probably that indicator there. But the family prayer, in terms of an effect, kind of fade as you go along. And so, if we’re doing those things early — because kids, 12, 13, I have teens, I have a 19-year-old, a 17-year-old, a 14-year-old.

Mary Richards: We line up pretty well. You’re in the thick of it, just like me.

22:15

Justin Dyer: Twelve-year-old, 10-year-old and 8-year-old, right? So, I’ve got all these kids, and my younger kids, they can’t get to the temple by themselves. I mean, that’s just not possible. And so us taking them and us building in family patterns of religious practices, then, helps them to start going to the temple and start saying, “Oh, this is something that we as a family do. We’re religious together.” And then that can help to jump-start and push them forward in the future.

Something I’d also say is that we didn’t have this, we weren’t able to look at it, is family scripture study. Kids who study their scriptures, particularly later — so in the 16, 17, 18 range — if they’re studying their scriptures, they’re more likely to increase in their temple attendance through that time period. So, personal scripture study doesn’t predict it really well at the younger ages — that’s where family makes most of the difference — but if the family can help to instill that scripture study, that scripture study then seems to make an impact later on.

And so those kinds of things that we’re doing in the early years, I think, seem to be really critical in terms of family religious activities together, be it family prayer, family scripture study, encouraging scripture study. Scripture study tended to be one of the things that was very predictive of being endowed later on. So, and I don’t want to have any parents feel like, “Oh, I missed my window, and, you know, I can’t affect them anymore,” and those kinds of things.

Mary Richards: Or “I have done all these things. Why aren’t we seeing, you know, that sort of thing?”

23:49

Justin Dyer: Exactly. Exactly. So none of these is a silver bullet, of course, right? And yet, what it does is it provides the very best ground for the seed to flourish. A lot of what we’re doing in parenting is simply preparing the ground. And we can say, you know, “We prepared the ground as well as our mortal, fallen parenthood can.” And all of us feel that and have experienced that. We prepared the ground as very best that we can. And that’s what really this is about. How do we prepare that ground?

How do we, you know, Jacob 5, you know, give it nutrients and work that ground so that it gives it the very best chance to thrive. Even the Lord of the vineyard, some of the trees were a bit wild. Some of our kids are a bit wild. But what we can do is, in all that, is prepare the ground as very best we can. And then with our older kids, if they’re not connected with the Church, we still prepare that ground by helping them feel the Lord’s love through us.

24:53

Mary Richards: You know, and as Sister Tamara W. Runia taught so beautifully in general conference, of the Young Women general presidency, we “stay at the tree.” We continue to keep our covenants, we partake of God’s love, we continue to keep those relationships strong. That’s something I think about. I also thought about here, too, that yes, your research — because you needed a good-sized sample, and so you’re looking at Utah and Arizona, where temples are a little closer to the people. Now, because of this just incredible growth of temple building around the world, temples are getting closer to people.

How can we help families of teenagers in some of these places where it’s harder to get to a temple, a house of the Lord, right now?

25:32

Justin Dyer: Oh, that’s such a great question. And so I’m sure there’s some people who are listening and saying, Well, I’d love to attend the temple more, but, you know, it’s just not possible. We may be able to get a youth group together.”

25:43

Mary Richards: That was me growing up in the Midwest. It was maybe once a year, we’d do a big temple trip, take a big bus. But the temples are coming closer, at least in the Midwest, to my family now. But I’m sorry to interrupt you, but yes, that idea of around the world, of, would you say, you know, continue this idea that you are a temple-recommend-holding family, or that you are a temple-worthy family, those kinds of things.

26:05

Justin Dyer: Oh, absolutely. And that’s why I love how President Nelson talked about, as often “as your circumstances permit.” Going to the temple is a sacrifice. For me, I have several temples around me, and so it’s a little bit smaller sacrifice. But OK, if I’m a regular going, that does require a little bit more of me. And that requirement is actually a good thing, right? That we invest. For people who are farther from the temple and can’t get there as regularly, them going as often as they can is still that investment, is still giving something to the Lord, is still focused on what the temple means and why we go there.

BYU Professor Justin Dyer gives a devotional in the Marriott. Center.
Justin Dyer, a professor in religious education at Brigham Young University, gives a campus devotional in the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah, on May 23, 2023. | Joey Garrison/BYU

I suppose the farthest I’ve ever lived from a temple is about three hours from the temple, and I wasn’t going nearly as often as I do now, but that preparation and the thought that goes into that, and the specialness, then, with my little kids — I had little kids at the time. They were, you know, not old enough to do baptisms or anything — but it was a, “OK, we’re going to take our family down, and my wife and I are going to switch off attending the temple.” And our kids ran around in that area. And so in some ways, even though it was less frequent, because of the sacrifice involved and the planning and all that, it did do something for us, maybe that the kind of temple attendance that I have now doesn’t quite do, but perhaps the frequency, if you will, now, may make up for that in some way.

And so the answer with so many of these things is simply: We do the very best that we can, but certainly those family religious practices, right? Even if we can’t be in the temple, those family religious practices are crucial to this. Now, having six children, family religious practices aren’t always going to go the way we want them to.

Mary Richards: He’s breathing my air.

28:16

Justin Dyer: You know, the wrestling matches that we’ve just had to, you know, it’s not wrestling the scriptures. That would be a little bit better, I suppose, it’s their wrestling each other during that. But the patterns that we lay down and the importance that our children see that we place on these things, even in the less-than-ideal circumstances that our family religious practices might take, it still matters, and the Lord sees that.

28:43

Mary Richards: Yeah. As we wrap up, are there any resources you’d like to point people to when we talk more about this conversation of religiosity and mental health, about temple attendance and our teenagers in particular, where would you point people to go to learn some more information?

28:56

Justin Dyer: So, obviously the Church has their Life Help section, and they have the Mental Health section there. That’s a wonderful place to go to get some information about that. For those individuals who might be struggling with scrupulosity, there’s a wonderful book by Debra Debra McClendon called “Freedom From Scrupulosity: Reclaiming Your Religious Experience From Anxiety and OCD.” It’s a wonderful resource by a fantastic mental health professional that is specifically focusing on Latter-day Saints. So, that’s a very good resource to look at as well.

29:30

Mary Richards: Yeah, the Life Help section you mentioned is in Gospel Library. It’s incredible. There’s so much to find there. And also, I would point people to the Emotional Resilience course offered by Welfare and Self-Reliance Services. I took that course and learned so much about how to be better myself at building more self-reliance, building more emotional resilience to the things in my life and around me.

29:51

Justin Dyer: Another thing is to make sure that we are having open communication with our loved ones. We might not know that we’re experiencing what might be OCD or some other anxiety or depression. And so if we’re having those kinds of conversations as parents to children, that’s going to be very helpful to be able to understand more of what their experiences are.

30:13

Mary Richards: So, there’s so much out there. And of course, we’ve also been mentioning President Nelson’s teachings and invitations, and I go back to what he told youth and young adults about your most important identities, that you are a child of God and that you are a child of the covenant, and you are a disciple of Jesus Christ. And isn’t that what we do, why we go to worship in the house of the Lord, is because of those that identity, I would think, as well, at least, that’s what I’m finding in my own life as I learn and grow and muddle through being a parent of teenagers and my own journey.

We have a question we ask every Church News podcast guest, and that is: What do you know now? And so, I would love to ask you, Professor Justin Dyer, what do you know now, after these many years that you’ve studied this intersection and correlation and relationship between religiosity and mental health, but what do you know now as well about teenagers and the house of the Lord?

31:11

Justin Dyer: I think one of the things that I’ve learned is how much the Lord truly loves us and how much He is trying to help us through His gospel, through the organization of the Church, through the temple, and how wonderfully blessed these children of ours are because they have it.

Now, are there difficulties? Absolutely. Do we experience hard things sometimes in the Church? Do we feel weight put upon us? Sometimes in the Church, we can feel things are really heavy. And I think the leaders of the Church have been so good about helping us to understand the balance that we should have. And yet, at the same time, that heavy can be so good for us. It can be Christ’s burden that we are lifting. Elder David A. Bednar gave a wonderful talk a while back about a truck that was stuck and only got unstuck when it finally had a load put on it.

Now, again, we have to have wisdom and order in all things, and we shouldn’t be running faster than we have strength. Of course, we need to make sure that we’re doing that. At the same time, the Lord has blessed us so abundantly with the Church, with leaders, with expectations that are so very freeing. One of the wonderful things that we have in the Church is, say, the Word of Wisdom, the law of chastity. These kinds of things have gone a little bit by the wayside in the world, and from a purely if I’m just putting on a research hat here, the Word of Wisdom is so good for our mental health. Following the law of chastity, having sexual relations only within marriage, is actually something that is so very good for us.

And though there are certain burdens that we do bear, there are so many other burdens that we do not have to lift. And I honestly look at these Church leaders — Young Men’s, Young Women’s leaders — and I just think to myself, “You’re helping to save lives here,” right? You’re helping these youth to connect to the Lord.” And the research, if you will, bears that out, that on average, this is better for you, and then our personal lives bears that out. Of course, with all of the other, let’s make sure that we are focusing on the individual and seeing what their experience is. Maybe one youth is struggling to go to the temple. All right, let’s try to understand that youth. What’s happening with them? What’s the best way to engage with them? One youth or the other might have those kinds of struggles.

We don’t want to engage with youth in mass, though sometimes we do that; we give these general instructions. But on the local level, what a blessing it is to say, “Oh, you know what? Temple attendance is a wonderful thing. Let’s organize that as families. Let’s organize that.” But never lose sight of the one who might be struggling in one way or the other, and engaging with them as they might be having a different experience than others. But the Lord has provided what I see as the very best structure within which we can help youth and adults to flourish.

34:40

Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.

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