The Impact of Teaching Gnosticism and Spirituality on Students’ Mental Health
Subject Areas :
Keywords: Mental Health, Spirituality, Gnosticism,
Abstract :
The present research aims at assessing the effect of teaching gnosticism and spirituality on raising mental health among female high-school students in District 13 of Tehran during academic year 1386-87. Out of the sample of 120 students who were selected through a multi-stage sampling method, 60 students who had obtained higher scores on the mental health questionnaire were singled out in each school. 60 students in one school were assigned to the experimental group and the other 60 to the control group. Ten educational session was held for the experimental group based on Gnostic and spiritual approach whose foundation was on understanding of cognitive errors with the help of stories in Rumi's Mathnawi. To collect data, Goldberg Mental Health Test was employed. This test is composed of 28 four-choice items which concern four areas of physical symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social functioning, and depression symptoms. There were totally 7 items pertaining to each of these areas. For data analysis, both descriptive statistics (e.g. frequency measures, mean, standard deviation, skewedness) and inferential statistics (e.g. analysis of covariance, LSD test) were used. The analysis of covariance demonstrates that teaching gnosticism and spirituality might raise students’ mental health, students’ physical functioning, students’ social functioning, and might lower students’ anxiety level and depression.