Investigating the effect of prayer in increasing the mental health of college students

The present study has been carried out with the aim of investigating the effect of religious thoughts and beliefs like prayer on general health of college students. Method of this research is of casual-comparative type and using a random sampling, 50 students who are committed to prayer and 50 students who are not committed to prayer were selected. GHQ questionnaire was completed in order to evaluate the general health by the test and control group. The scores of mental health of students were analyzed via independent 2 group t- test. The results showed that there is a meaningful difference for the average scores of mental health between these two groups. Therefore, one could say that religious beliefs such as prayer have a desirable effect on mental health of students. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 2nd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance.