Religious Coping, Religiosity, Depression and Anxiety among Medical Students in a Multi-Religious Setting

Abstract

Medical students are vulnerable to depression and anxiety due to the nature of their academic life. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms among medical students and the association between religious coping, religiosity and socio-demographic factors with anxiety and depressive symptoms. A cross sectional design was used for this study. Scales used were the Malay version of the Duke Religious Index (DUREL-M), the Malay version of the Brief Religious Coping Scale (Brief RCOPE) and the Malay version Hospital and Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS-M). 622 students participated in this study. They scored moderately on the organized (mean: 3.51) and non-organized religious (mean: 3.85) subscales of the DUREL, but had high intrinsic religiosity (mean: 12.18). The prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms were 4.7% and 17.4% respectively, which is lower than local as well as international data. Islam, negative religious coping and the presence of depressive symptoms were significantly associated with anxiety symptoms. Only the presence of anxiety symptoms was significantly associated with depressive symptoms. Negative religious coping, rather than positive religious coping, has significant association with depressive and anxiety symptoms. Redirecting focus towards negative religious coping is imperative to boost mental health outcomes among medical students.

Predictors associated with studies and lifestyle and subjective feeling of depressive symptoms among Polish medical students

“…Similar link was described by Vasegh S as being close to statistical significance (p= 0.058) in a research carried out on a group of 285 medical students from Iran [24]. Francis B et al indicated that negative religious coping was linked to occurrence of depressive symptoms among 622 Malaysian medial students [25]. Our research didn't find a link between number of years after middle school after which one had entered medical studies and noticing symptoms that might had suggested depression during the course of medical studies.…”

Eating Disorder Among Malaysian University Students and Its Associated Factors

“…Several studies have reported that being religious or engaging in religious activities could help individuals to cope with mental health issues. 29 Malaysia is a Muslim majority country, with over 90% of the Muslims reported to be practicing their basic beliefs in Islam. 30 Therefore, based on these evidences, since the majority of our study sample were Malays and Muslims, this could explain that the students are coping well with depression, due to strong religious practices, and therefore explains the nonsignificant association between depression and eating disorder.…”

Effects of Levels of Self-Regulation and Regulatory Teaching on Strategies for Coping With Academic Stress in Undergraduate Students

“…Prior research on motivational and affective factors of learning in university contexts has also recognized the importance of the different types of coping strategies used by university students. Some examples have addressed the role of religious coping (Francis et al, 2018), the role of health habits as a coping strategy (Tada, 2017), how coping strategies related to well-being (Park and Adler, 2003;Bhullar et al, 2014;Freire et al, 2016), types of coping and their relationship to resilience, academic coping within a religious vs. secular context (González-Torres and Artuch, 2014). The associations between coping strategies, anxiety and engagement-burnout have also been established (de la Fuente et al, 2015a).…”