Religiosity, personal values and psychological health of students

Abstract

Religion and personal values are important factors of human existence. Psychological health of the man means the maturity of the personality, her activity, selfactualization.Research generally finds a positive relationship between religiosity and mental health, life satisfaction, well-being and happiness, feelings of stress, psychological security.Despite the increasing number of published investigations, the relationships between religiosity, personal values and psychological health of students not researched during the last years.The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between these qualities among 59 male and female orthodox students of Russian universities aged 17 to 23 years. “Individual Religiosity” Questionnaire of I. Shemet, “Hierarchy of Personality” Questionnaire of E.V. Shestun, E.A. Morozova and “Psychological Health” Questionnaire of A. Kozlov were used in this research. The results indicated that there was a positive meaningful relationship (p<0.001) between religiosity and spiritual values, and between religiosity, spiritual and a family of spheres of psychological health (p<0.001). Based on the results there is meaningful negative relationship (p<0.001) between religiosity and mental, bodily
values. The results of factor analysis indicated that spiritual values and the importance of family explain religiosity. We found that high levels of religiosity is the basis of spiritual development of man, family, creativity, helping behavior, and relates with values of love, forgiveness, altruism and compassion. Students with low levels of religiosity planned their activities better and
were more active in expressing their views. All the students desired to build interpersonal relationships based on social norms and had motives for intellectual development.