Depressive symptoms and spiritual wellbeing in Japanese university students

Abstract

A scale was developed to broadly assess spirituality and to examine the association between depressive symptoms and spiritual attitudes of Japanese university students. In 2011, students in two universities (n = 527) participated in the study by completing the Self-Rating Questionnaire for Depression (SRQ-D), the 25-Item Sky Spirituality Scale (SS-25) and responding to questions on lifestyle and religiosity. The reliability and validity of the SS-25 were verified using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient and factor analysis. Results indicated that female students had higher total SS-25 scores. Moreover, there was a weak negative correlation between the SRQ-D and SS-25. The multiple linear regression model with gender and age as covariates also indicated that the life satisfaction domain was strongly associated with depression (beta = -0.418) and that the social connections domain was weakly associated with depression (beta = -0.147). Results of an analysis of covariance adjusted for gender and age indicated ...