Religion and Health: An Examination of the Effect of Religiosity on Health in a Sample of University Students

One of the issues in the field of sociology that has attracted the attention of many social scientists is the important role of social determinants in human health. In spite of the significant progress of medical sciences in identification of pathogeneses and treatment methods, sociologists are interested in the study of health and illness and identification of the effective factors. The results of sociological studies indicate that health is multi-faceted, and may be affected by cultural, economic and social factors in addition to biological factors. Most of medical sociologists believe that social factors play an important role in human health; biological and medical explanations, which ignore the significant role of social and cultural factors on health and illness patterns, are insufficient. This has led sociologists to study the social and cultural determinants of health. This research aims to investigate the effect of some social and cultural determinants such as religiosity, healthy lifestyle and level of social support on health among university students. The present study examines the direct and indirect effect of religiosity on health. As a variable, health has been investigated in three physical, mental and social dimensions. The indirect effect of religiosity on health has been studied through social support and healthy lifestyle. In order to study the relationship between religiosity and health, theories of Emile Durkheim, Kingsley Davis, Milton Yinger, Thomas ODea’s functionalism theory, and Max Weber and Peter Berger’s meaning theories have been utilized. Each of these approaches has implications for the relationship between religiosity and health. According to the functionalists, religion unifies society and preserves social integration. Also, religion provides a background for integration and categorizes people according to special ideology in peer social groups. This categorization could be a factor for promotion of intergroup integration against outer groups that follow different opinions and ideas. On the other hand, in relation to the research question, Berger and Weber's approach also seems important. According to these theorists religion, in addition to other functions, provides a meaningful and purposeful life in a world that is constantly meaningless. According to Weber, regardless of level of rationality in the society, individuals have a psychological need to find the world meaningful and purposeful. As a result of his view, religion is not functionless in the modern era. So from Weber’s point of view, it can be inferred that even in new forms of society religiosity can have a positive effect on health. Therefore, religious people that are more likely to control their carnal desires show less risky behavior and as a result, they may have a healthier life. In general, implication of functionalists and meaning theorists can be shown in a causal model as a theoretical model of this study as follow:Based on the proposed model and the review of literature, the following hypotheses can be reasonably inferred from:1. Religiosity has a positive effect on healthy lifestyle.2. Religiosity has a positive effect on social support.3. Social support has a positive effect on healthy lifestyle.4. Healthy lifestyle has a positive effect on health.5. Social support has a positive effect on health.6. Religiosity has a positive effect on health. In this research, a survey method was used to investigate the relationship between variables. It was performed based on a sample of 350 students of the University of Tabriz. Participants filled out a questionnaire containing mental, physical and social health measures (i.e., HS-36). Also, it contained measures for healthy lifestyles and social support as intervening variables and for religiosity as an independent variable. The measures enjoyed a high level of reliability and validity. Findings reveal that religiosity, healthy lifestyle, and social support have significant positive correlations with physical, mental, and social health and consequently with the general measure of health. In addition, the results of multivariate regression analysis reveal that these independent variables explain 36.8% of variance of general measure of health. However, the explained variance of mental health and social health (respectively, 31.2% and 32.6%) are almost twice as that of the physical health. Furthermore, the results of path analysis indicate that religiosity significantly and positively has both direct and indirect effects on general and mental health. Religiosity has also a significant indirect effect through social support and healthy lifestyle on physical and social health but it has no direct effect on these two dimensions of health. In general, the findings support the implications of functionalist theories on the positive effect of religion on healthy lifestyle and health, particularly mental and social health. Discussion of Results and In summary it can be said that the results of different statistical tests to examine the relationship between religiosity and health indicate that religiosity has a significant impact on promotion of health and its dimensions. According to the mentioned theoretical discussions concerning the relationship between religiosity and health, these results were expected. Indeed, the findings confirm these theories. According to these theories, the positive effect of religiosity on health and its dimensions can be explained through integration, ascetic and meaning functions of religion. A) Integration Function of ReligionAccording to the functionalists, religion unifies society, preserves social integration and motivates social unity. According to this approach, religious thoughts based on communicating and interacting with others extensively, make religious people incline to develop social relationships and social support. As a result, this leads to receiving lots of support from relatives and friends. On the other hand the extension of religion in society has caused religious people to join religious networks in addition to family, relatives, friends and occupational networks and hence have larger social networks than less religious people. Therefore, the expansion of social communications and joining diverse social networks provides a background for receiving social support for religious people. Accordingly, religion plays a positive role in promotion of social health by expanding religious people’s supportive networks.B) Meaning Function of ReligionAlthough Weber and Berger, like functionalists, emphasize on social functions of religion but they consider meaning function of religion. Based on this approach, by offering spiritual responses to human ultimate questions, making life purposeful, and coping with problems, religion acts as an obstacle to human meaningless crisis. As a result, the religious people that are less suffering from meaninglessness and aimlessness can better cope with difficulties and have mental peace and comfort. Therefore, the findings of the present study confirms the mentioned theories concerning to the positive effect of religiosity on mental health.C) Ascetic Function of ReligionAnother implication of Weber and Berger’s theory regarding the relationship between religion and health is the positive effect of religiosity on physical health. These theorists’ approaches imply that religion is an important factor to control the instinctive desires. Participating in religious ceremonies causes religious people to control their carnal desires.So the findings of the present study based on a positive and significant relationship between religion and health confirm that ascetic content of religion about controlling carnal desires and avoiding illegal affairs causes religious people to control their instinctive desires and prevents them from high-risk behaviors and consequently is more physically healthy.