A meta-analysis of the effect of religiosity and spirituality on treatment of psychotic-clinical disorders (2003-2013)

Although in the 20th century religion was regarded as an obstacle in front of modernizing human societies and was a symbol of old-fashioned ideas, it leads to serenity and spiritual enjoyment for a religious person who believes that God is supporting them in all walks of life. Therefore, the question is whether religion is able to improve people’s mental health given the existing differences in individuals’ views in this regard. The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis on the association between mental health and religiosity.

The method of this study is meta-analysis. This study is among documentary researches that are based on systematic review. Systematic review pursues settlement and combination of researches and evidences that focus in special question. Statistical population of this study included papers published in peer reviewed journals that were connected to the topic and were published during 1380-1395. At first we did a primary study and gathered data. Validity of elected papers was appropriate (0.99). Validity of the Iranian papers was a bit higher than that of English papers. The researchers declared no conflict of interests.

Mental health, happiness and satisfaction of life were the most repeatedly mentioned subjects in Iranian papers and heterogeneity of variables were relatively low. In English studies, the majority of studies had focused on the effect of religiosity on health, quality of life and depression. Diversity of variables in English papers was higher than that of Iranian papers. Overall, according to the results of the reviewed papers, 34% of the findings reported a weak effect of religiosity on mental health, 34.4% indicated a strong impact and 31.4% showed a medium influence.

The effect size of religiosity has been studied more frequently in Iranian papers. The similarity in the low and high effect sizes in Iranian papers indicate that further studies are required in this regard.