Abstract
Abstract: Introduction: Mental health was included as one of the top ten health indicators and studies have shown it is related to religiosity and spirituality (R/S). Objective: The aim of the present study is to evaluate whether the degree of R/S of medical students influences anxiety and depression disorders during undergraduate school. Method: This study was carried out with a convenience non-probabilistic sample, consisting of 298 students. The Duke Religiosity Index in Brazilian Portuguese (P-DUREL) was used in questionnaire form, whereas, to map depression, anxiety and stress, DASS-21 was applied. Results: It was demonstrated that the different dimensions of religiosity have no association with the students’ emotional disorders, anxiety and stress. Conclusions: It is possible to propose recommendations for future research, so that the results can be used in meta-analysis studies. Studies that did not show a significant association between the variables cannot be neglected, so that the positive and negative dimensions of the association between R/S and mental health can be investigated.
Highlights
Mental health was included as one of the top ten health indicators and studies have shown it is related to religiosity and spirituality (R/S)
Even though religious values are still widely used by young individuals with a high level of education, a population that is exposed daily to situations that affect their mental health[20], it was demonstrated that all dimensions of Organizational Religious Activity (ORA), Non-Organizational Religious Activity (NORA) and intrinsic religiosity (IR) do not have a statistically significant association with the students’ emotional disorders of depression, anxiety and stress
When compared with previously published scientific articles about depression, the present study corroborates the one by Luiz Gonçalves JR et al.[22], whose result showed that none of the R/S variables was associated with depression in a sample of students from the health are (Medicine and Nursing)
Summary
Mental health was included as one of the top ten health indicators and studies have shown it is related to religiosity and spirituality (R/S). Studies have shown a significant association between mental health, religiosity and spirituality (R/S)[3], mainly with the emergence of the “evidence-based spirituality”[4] concept. That is because most of the articles that associated religious variables to positive health results did not include young individuals, but the elderly and the ill[9]. Despite this context of few studies, it is known that university students face many conflicts (educational, cultural and financial)[10] and that medical students suffer more stress when compared to those attending other courses. Depression rates increase over the course of medical training, with a significant association with diseases and a decrease in academic performance[9]
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