The Relationship between Mental Health and Religious Orientation with Emotional Cognitive Strategies among Trainee Medical Students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Mental health and promoting it at the community level are the most important responsibilities the World Health Organization has assigned to all governments. Also, religious orientation (internal and external) is one of the factors influencing behavior and cognition. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of mental health and religious orientation with emotional cognitive strategies among medical trainees of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

This study is descriptive-correlational. The statistical population of this study included all students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, who were selected using a multi-stage random sampling method. In this way, outof the 12 hospitals affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, five were randomly selected and among all the training classes of the hospital, two classes are randomly selected in each class, two thirds of the students were randomly selected. Questionnaires were distributed among 200 students and 150 questionnaires, which had been filled in appropriately, were received. The tools used in the study included: Quickly measure first-level symptoms of DSM-5, Religious orientation questionnaire and Cognitive EmotionRegulation Questionnaire. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation coefficient were used. In the present study, all the ethical considerations have been observed and no conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

The results showed that there was a significant relationship between mental health and emotional cognitive regulation. There was also a significant relationship between religious orientation and cognitive emotional regulation. A significant relationship was found between mental health and religious orientation. Mental health and internal religious orientation were also significantly correlated, but there was no significant relationship between mental health and external religious orientation.

The results of this study showed that mental health and religious orientation are important factors in using cognitive emotional strategies.