European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Introduction:Depression is a global mental health issue. Vulnerability for this condition increases in the university student population, specifically medical and health science disciplines. Previous evidence showed that religiosity and spirituality were inversely linked with depression. They have also been predominantly treated as one construct. Still, the mechanisms of these relationships are vague.
 
Objective: This study aims to investigate moderating roles religious and spiritual coping played on the relationships between religiosity, spirituality and depression among medical and health sciences students.
 
Methods:A total of 151 medical and health science students were recruited from various universities across Malaysia. Beck’s Depression Inventory second edition (BDI-II) was used to measure depression and depressive symptoms, the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) was used to measure religiosity, and the Spirituality Scale (SS) was used to measure the beliefs, intuitions, lifestyle choices, practices, and rituals representative of the human spiritual dimension.Whilstthe brief scale of religious coping (RCOPE) and spiritual coping questionnaire (SCQ)were used to assess positive and negative religious and spiritual coping respectively.
 
Results:Negative religious coping played a moderating role in the relationship between religiosity and depression. Similarly, negative spiritual coping also played a moderating role between spirituality and depression.
 
Conclusion:These findings give insight into this population. It also provides avenues for psychoeducation and intervention. The ramifications of these findings may be applicable at the society as well as the government and policy making level in Malaysia.