A new study published in the journal Stress & Health suggests that powerful religious or spiritual experiences in adolescence may leave lasting psychological and social marks well into adulthood. The findings point to a complex picture: such experiences appear to increase a person’s engagement in social activities like voting and volunteering, while also being linked to heightened emotional vulnerability, including loneliness and signs of trauma.
The research provides new insights into how spiritual turning points shape long-term development, indicating that these moments may serve both as openings for connection and as indicators of deeper emotional strain.
Religious and spiritual experiences that deeply impact a person’s life are more common than one might think. National surveys show that over a third of Americans report having had such a moment. These events are often described as life-altering and imbued with a sense of personal transformation.
However, researchers have long debated the effects these experiences may have. While some studies connect general religious involvement with positive mental and physical health, much less is known about the specific, more intense experiences people describe as transformative. Are they helpful, harmful, or both? The current study set out to answer this by focusing on the long-term outcomes of these events across different areas of health and wellbeing.
The researchers focused on what they describe as “transformative religious or spiritual experiences.” These are moments that people say changed their lives, and which tend to impact both how they see themselves and how they relate to others.
“Transformative religious or spiritual experiences are not only life-changing but common. Since they are by definition life-changing, we naturally would like to know how they could have changed one’s life. The major things people are concerned with in life are physical health and mental wellbeing. Few studies examine that,” said study author Zhuo Job Chen, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
“There is little longitudinal evidence showing how reports of transformative religious or spiritual experiences relate to health and wellbeing. There are correlational studies — but correlations only give you a snapshot of the moment — healthier people may report more religious or spiritual experiences, or people having these experiences may be more likely to say they are healthy. We don’t know the causal relationship.”
“This study investigates the outcomes of transformative religious or spiritual experiences using a nationally representative longitudinal sample,” Chen explained. “We also examined the antecedents of religious or spiritual experiences — what factors in life lead to having a transformative experience. This is also quite novel.”
The study used data from a large national survey called the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. This project followed more than 10,000 individuals across 14 years, starting in adolescence and continuing into early adulthood. At one point during late adolescence, participants were asked whether they had ever had a religious or spiritual experience that changed their life.
About 17 percent said yes. The researchers then looked at what kind of experiences these individuals had earlier in life and how their lives unfolded in the years that followed.
Before these transformative experiences occurred, the data suggest that individuals were more likely to come from difficult backgrounds. They often reported lower family income, strained relationships with parents, more depressive symptoms, and greater exposure to stress during childhood. At the same time, they also tended to report higher levels of religious involvement, including more frequent prayer and church attendance.
Years later, in early adulthood, those who had reported a transformative experience were more likely to show certain patterns. On one hand, they were more involved in civic and social life. They were more likely to volunteer and to vote—activities that often reflect a person’s engagement with their community and a desire to contribute beyond themselves.
On the other hand, they also showed signs of emotional strain. They reported feeling lonelier and were more likely to have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Some reported poorer self-rated health and more symptoms of depression, although these findings were less consistent across different analyses.
Notably, there was no strong evidence linking these experiences to physical health outcomes like high blood pressure or cholesterol. The most consistent effects appeared in the domains of mental health and social engagement. Chen was surprised to find that “most of the effects concern with psychological health, not physical ones.”
The researchers interpret these patterns as support for the idea that transformative religious or spiritual experiences may disrupt the sense of self. This disruption may lead some people to feel more emotionally exposed or unsettled. At the same time, it may also encourage them to reach outward, toward social causes or communities that provide a sense of meaning and belonging.
“Having a transformative religious or spiritual experience might be a double-edged sword,” Chen told PsyPost. “It may indicate certain psychological vulnerability as a result of early life factors that weaken the ego integrity, including adverse childhood environments, negative parental dynamics, and heightened religious involvement. It in turn is associated with some markers of mental and social vulnerability (i.e., PTSD diagnosis and loneliness) later in life. However, having a transformative experience also predicts increased prosocial engagement (i.e., volunteering and voting), suggesting the potential role of meaning-making and integration in shaping long-term psychological and social outcomes.”
“In other words, I tend to view having a transformative religious or spiritual experience as a vulnerability of the self and yet an opportunity for connecting to something greater than the self. The self is transformed so that it is no longer the original small self, but has the potential to become something greater.”
As with all research, there are limitations. One important point is that participants were asked only a single question about whether they had a transformative experience, without any detail about what the experience involved. This means the study cannot distinguish between different types of experiences or understand the personal meaning people attached to them.
The researchers also note that the experiences were self-reported, which raises questions about how people interpreted the term “life-changing.” It is possible that people who were already vulnerable were more likely to label certain events as transformative. This makes it difficult to say whether the experience itself caused later outcomes or simply reflected a deeper underlying process.
The participants in the study were also relatively young at the final time point, with many still in their twenties. Some physical health outcomes may not yet have had time to develop, and it is unclear whether the same findings would apply to older adults. More long-term studies are needed to explore how these experiences play out across the lifespan.
Lastly, although the researchers controlled for a wide range of early life factors, the study was observational in nature. This means that it cannot prove cause and effect. It does, however, offer strong evidence of patterns worth further exploration.
“Transformative religious or spiritual experiences fit into the wider category of ‘mysticism,’ which I define as a family of extraordinary experiences that transcend the perceived reality and transform the individual,” Chen added. “This includes a wide range of experiences, spanning from cosmic consciousness, unitary experience, to typical religious experiences with deities, to spiritist encounters, shamanism and psychedelic experiences, and to psi phenomenon and nonphysicalism. I have a paper outlining this large model, and a forthcoming book Psychology of Mysticism with Cambridge University Press.”
The study, “Between Vulnerability and Connection: Longitudinal Evidence on the Impact of Transformative Religious/Spiritual Experiences,” was authored by Zhuo Job Chen, Renae Wilkinson, and Richard G. Cowden.
