Connections of mental disorders and psychological wellbeing with religious attitude and religious struggle

Religiosity is a fundamental element in human lives that influences behavior, emotions and cognition, through religious beliefs, values, practices, and experience. Recently, it appears to gain an increasing attention for its potential relationship with mental health indicators. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between mental disorder symptomatology and psychological wellbeing of University samples aged from 18 to 40 years in terms of religious attitude and religious struggle. To address this issue PERMA Profiler Scale, DSM-5 Self-Rated Level 1 Cross-Cutting Symptom Measure, the brief form of Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Measure, Ok-Religious Attitude Scale, and Religious Struggle Scale was administered to 269 participants, which consisted of 174 (65%) female and 91 (34%) male. According to results, old age was related with religious attitude; low education level with high religious experience; high income and education level with high psychological wellbeing, and high mental disorders were associated with young age, low income and education level. Religious attitude was associated with low mental disorder symptoms except for anger, mania, anxiety, somatic, psychosis, memory problem, dissociation and negative affectivity, and with high psychological wellbeing except for accomplishment and negative emotions. In addition to this, religious struggle was associated with high mental disorder symptoms except for mania and substance use, and with low psychological wellbeing. Religious people were associated with low religious struggle except for demonic and moral struggles, and psychological wellbeing was associated with low mental disorder symptoms except for mania and substance use. Implication from the findings, which are mainly consistent with previous studies, that religiosity provides a sense of structure in life and promotes mental health yet conflict in religion may reflect negatively on mental health.