Swapping one problem for another. Religion sounds like the worst place for someone who is mentally vulnerable. It's like pulling out your credit card in a shopping mall full of salesmen who are under tremendous pressure to make big sales asap
I can be persuaded, though. Can you show research?
- If you look at highly religious areas like the bible belt, they are often linked to worse mental health outcomes for those who don't the religious worldview such as queer people https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/lgbtq-youth... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8724198 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10752621
- That wave of christianism, ironically called christian science, was the cause of mental distress and deaths of tons of children due to the parents religious views. Religious based neglect is a common form of religious based abuse too.
https://childrenshealthcare.org/victims https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7545013 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9521945/
- Having religious parents is often associated with conditions like anxiety or depression
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10719686
- Struggles of a religious nature causing mental health issues all the way up to suicidal ideation
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266691532... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4776639 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371293385_SUICIDE_A...
The first 3 links you’ve provided discuss mental health as it relates to geography, not religion. To be sure, religion is associated with those geographic areas, but so are numerous other factors like race, income, etc etc.
The next links are closer to target, they talk about religious objections to medical treatments and the adverse affects upon kids. Nobody should deny this is a real problem, but fortunately it is a very small problem. ( One of the studies found only 172 fatalities over 20 years, and even estimated 10% of the kids may have died anyway.). So I’ll grant that is a real problem, but not one that affects many people. With luck, perhaps it will get better over time.
The next study is interesting, but again very limited. It has 6k subjects, but these are only with religious mothers and only in the UK. This study cites prior study that concluded “ an individual's religiosity is consistently, positively related to their own mental health in US samples”.
The next study associated suicidal tendencies with a very narrow aspect of religion, and even then self reported: “We recruited a relatively small sample that was geographically, racially, and socioeconomically homogenous. We also relied solely on self-report data.”
The next study does not seem to help your argument. It deals with religious beliefs in cancer patients and says “Higher levels of religiosity and spirituality are associated with reduced risk of suicidality and suicidal behaviors [29–31], including in advanced cancer patients “
The final link is just a case study about a single suicidal pastor. It concludes with a paragraph that says “Although there are studies showing that religious people are less prone to suicide…”
So I can’t say all that changes the findings of the many studies that conclude religion is good for mental health.