relationship between religious orientation, anxiety, and depression among college students: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: religious obligation helps people to develop mental health by creating internal commitment to special rules. this meta-analysis aimed to determine the relationship between religious orientation and anxiety among college students. methods: major scientific databases including pubmed, web of science, science direct, ebsco, proquest and psycinfo were searched for original research articles published 1987-2016. a random effect model was used to combine correlation coefficient. all analyses were performed using stata mp. results: after screening of 7235 documents, 13 articles including 5620 participants met inclusion criteria in this meta-analysis. correlation coefficient was -0.08 (95% ci= -0.19, -0.03) which indicated with increasing religious orientation, anxiety and depression reduced (p<0.001). characteristics such as sex, geographic region, and type of religions were potential sources of heterogeneity. based on fill-and-trim method the adjusted pooled r was obtained, -0.06 (95% ci= -0.16, -0.04). conclusion: there was a weakness relationship between religious orientation and mental anxiety and depression. therefore, it needs to improve knowledge of student about advantages of religious orientation.