Ravanshenasi & Din

The present research aims at an investigation of relationship between leaning towards religious practices and mental health among students of Azad Islamic University of Shabestar through correlation and comparative methods. To analyze the data, table of frequency, mean and standard deviation were used; and to test the hypotheses, Pearson test and mean difference were used. The sample group consisted of 242 subjects selected through simple random method. There is a direct correlation between mental health and the degree of leaning towards religious practice. Here, the strongest relationship is related to stress and the weakest one is related to phobia. There are meaningful differences between two groups of male and female students as to both variables, i.e. mental health and leaning towards religious practice; but there is no meaningful difference between two variables as far as discipline and sex are concerned. Mental health is affected by numerous factors. Among those factors, leaning towards religious practices has meaningful and positive correlation with mental health. The more leaning towards religious practices among students is, the higher their mental health and the less the possibility of mental disorder among them would be. Furthermore, the degree of mental health of female students is higher, as is leaning towards religious practice among male students.