The relationship between forgiveness and religiosity as predictors of mental health symptoms

The present study aims to investigate the relationship among forgiveness, mental health and religiosity. The sample of this empirical study consists of 1092 undergraduate students (398 males and 694 females) from Sakarya University. The questionnaire was conducted to the sample during the autumn semester of 2014-2015 academic year. In this research, to determine demographic variables (gender, age, perceived income, social environment, faculty, class level) Personal Information Form; to measure forgiveness the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the Forgivingness Scale; to measure mental health the Brief Symptom Inventory; to measure religiosity the Religiosity Scale and the Religious Orientation Scale was used. Also, three more questions were added about the orientations of belief the forgiveness by God, humility, and arrogance. The data was analyzed by SPSS 20.00 statistical program. t-test, ANOVA, Pearson Correlation and regression were used for data analysis. The findings of the study indicate that there are significant differences with mental health, forgiveness and religiosity according to demographic variables. There are positive correlations between humility and forgiveness while there are negative correlations between arrogance and forgiveness. According to results, there are also significant positive correlations between religiosity- forgiveness, mental health-forgiveness and religiosity-mental health. Furthermore, religiosity predicts forgiveness; forgiveness and religiosity predict mental health as well. Especially self-forgiveness predicts mental health at the highest level. In sum, the results of this study indicate that there are significant positive correlations among mental health, forgiveness and religiosity. Keywords: Forgiveness, Mental Health, Religiosity, Religious Orientation