ritual health: Is it a determinant factor for preventing risky behaviours among university students

Background and Objective: The most common high-risk behaviors that have profound and negative effects on the health of the community take place in the university environment. Nowadays, the necessity of exploring ways to correct and reduce the high risk behaviors requires identification of the effective factors on it. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between spiritual health and high-risk behaviors among university students in Kerman city in 2017.Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. The statistical population was all students studying at Bahonar University of Medical Sciences and Islamic Azad University in Kerman in 2017-18. 804 students were selected by quota sampling method. The research instrument was a demographic questionnaire and the 20-item spiritual well-being scale of Palutzian & Ellison and Iranian adolescent riskiness scale (IARS), which includes 39 items for high risk behaviors. After collecting the questionnaires, the data were analyzed using SPSS software. Findings: The spiritual health of the majority of subjects (66.7%) was moderate range with an average of 90.65 ± 16.64. Also, the mean total score of high-risk behaviors was 79.16 ± 24.6 which was lower than the median (117). There was a significant negative relationship between the students spiritual health and their high risk behaviors. Also, there was a significant negative relationship between all seven components of high risk behavior and two dimensions of existential and religious health. Conclusion: According to the results, it is necessary and important to plan and implement a project so as to strengthen the spiritual health of students through its inclusion in the curriculum and then to reduce the incidence of high-risk behaviors.

کلیدواژه ها:

spiritual health ، high risk behavior ، student