Religious Practice and Psychological Distress: The Importance of Gender, Ethnicity and Immigrant Status G. ERIC JARVIS LAURENCE J. KIRMAYER MORTON WEINFELD McGill University JEAN-CLAUDE LASRY University of Montréal Abstract The present study examined the relationship between religious practice and psychological distress in a culturally diverse urban population to explore how religious affiliation, gender, ethnicity, and immigrant status affect this relationship. Data were drawn from a study of health care utiliza- tion in Montreal. A stratified community sample of 1485 yielded four religious groups: Protestant (n = 205), Catholic (813), Jewish (201), and Buddhist (150), and a group with no declared religion (116). The sample was composed of five ethnocultural groups: Anglophone Canadian-born, Francophone Canadian-born, Afro-Caribbean, Vietnamese, and Filipino immigrants. Psychological distress was assessed with the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Religious involvement was measured with three items: 1) declared religion; 2) frequency of attendance at religious meetings; and 3) frequency of religious rituals performed at home. Multiple regression models examined the relationship of religious practice to distress, controlling for sociodemographic variables including ethnicity. Overall, attendance at religious services was associated with a lower GHQ score. Attendance at religious services also was inversely related Vol 42(4): 657–675 DOI: 10.1177/1363461505058921 www.sagepublications.com Copyright © 2005 McGill University transcultural psychiatry ARTICLE December 2005 657