The Relationship Between Religious Attitudes, Fear of Death and Dying with General Health Condition: A Survey in College Students

This study aims to assess the relationship between religious attitudes of Ilam universities students (west of Iran), their perspectives about the fear of self and other’s death and dying, with their general health. This paper is an analytic survey in which 351 college students, who were selected by multistage sampling, participated. To measure interested variables, Persian format of standardized self-administered questionnaires was employed. Religious attitudes with odds ratio (OR) of 0.94 (95 % CI 0.91–0.97) and fear of self dying with 0.88 (95 % CI 0.81–0.96) were identified as a protective factors against the inappropriate general health condition. However, the fear of other’s death (OR 1.16; 95 % CI 1.05–1.28) was identified as a risk factor. This study showed that people who had more religious attitudes and fear of self dying had better general health as well as the fear of other’s death had a significant direct relationship with inappropriate general health condition.