The Relationship between Superstitions and Mental Health

Abstract

All societies and cultures of the world have some superstitions that people believe and use for explaining certain events in life. There are people who attribute the causes of some mental diseases to some superstition without finding any causes or treatments. Superstition refers to the primitive stage of the existence of human being, and the construction of group and societies. However, dependency and excessive use of it shows in some how the failure of individual in his adjustment, and it could be considered a sing of abnormality. This research aims to find out the spread of superstition among youth, its relation with mental health, and ages. Two scales were applied on a sample of 412 university students. Results are as follows: 1- There are only ten fiftieth statements of the scale gained the high percentage among the sample, those involved magic, palmistry, omens and evil spirits. 2- females have the higher scores of the superstitions scale whereas males got the higher scores of mental health`s scale. 3- The correlation between the two scales is (-0.39),between mental health and ages is (0.314) whereas between superstitions scale and age is (-0.173).