Correlation between Religious Beliefs with Mental Health and Academic Performance in Medical Students

Background: Recently, psychologists used the benefits of religion to promote a healthier community and educational status of students due to lots of investigations which indicated the positive effects of religion on mental health and self-regulation of students. Objectives: This study examines religious beliefs among medical students of Bandar Abbas Medical School and its association with their academic performance and mental health. Subjects and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 60 medical student in 2015. Data was gathered through three part questionnaire: demographic characteristics, religious beliefs questionnaire which was designed by Golriz and Baraheni and also the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ–28). The obtained data were statistically analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and t-test by SPSS version 19 for windows. Results: There were 54 respondents from the total population of 60 students with a response rate of 90%. Highest percentage of students (38.89%) had good religious beliefs and mental health problem was also diagnosed in 17 (31.5 %) of respondents population. Among subjects, 11 students (20.37%) had "high" scores, 18 students (33.33%) had "good" scores, 15 students (27.78%) had "normal" scores and 10 students (18.52%) had "low" scores. Conclusion: Data analysis indicated a statistically significant positive relationship between the religious belief status of participants and their mental health status and also negative correlation of religiosity with smoking. However, no significant relevance was observed between religious values and academic performance.