An Investigation of Relationship between Religious Orientation, Practical Obligation to the Islamic Tenets and Students' Mental Health

The present study has been done with the aim of investigating the relationship between religious orientation, practical obligation to the Islamic tenets, and students' mental health. The statistical population of this study was the Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, 340 of them were selected by multistage cluster sampling method. The investigation instruments were: the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28), the Practical Obligation to the Islamic Tenets, and Religious Orientation Questionnaire. In the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28), the lower the score the better the individual's mental health. In order to analyze statistical data, Pearsonian correlation method and multiple stepwise regression method have been utilized. The results show that:
- There is a negative and significant relationship between intrinsic religious orientation and mental health (p = 0.001 & r = -0.44).
- There is a negative and significant relationship between social extrinsic religious orientation and mental health (p = 0.001 & r = -0.40).
- There is a negative and significant relationship between personal extrinsic religious orientation and mental health (p = 0.001 & r = -0.37).
- There is a negative and significant relationship between practical obligation to the Islamic tenets and mental health (p = 0.001 & r = -0.50).
- The results also show that practical obligation to the Islamic tenets and intrinsic religious orientation predict 0.26 of common variance and this is significant at 0.001 level.