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The association between religious beliefs and mental health amongst medical students.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the association between religious beliefs (RB) and mental health (MH) among medical students alongwith assessment of correlations of RB and MH with age, gender, marital status and academic success.


METHODS
This cross-sectional study was carried on 200 randomly selected Muslim medical students of Islamic Azad University-Tehran Medical Branch between June and July 2006. MH and RB were assessed through General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) and the modified validated questionnaire, respectively. Data were analyzed by statistical methods such as Independent Sample T-test, Chi-square and one-way ANOVA methods. P-value < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.


RESULTS
Of a total of 200 students, 75 (37.5%) were male and 125 (62.5%) were female with mean age of 18.98 +/- 0.956 years. A statistically significant association was found between RB and MH (P=0.0001). The stronger the RB, the higher the academic success (P=0.017). Similarly a significant association of academic success was also detected with MH (P=0.000). However, there was no association of age, gender and marital status either with RB or MH.


CONCLUSION
Stronger RB results in good mental health and academic progress. However, further investigations are required to achieve more reliable results.