中華心理學刊
民98，51卷，2期，251-276

Tungshan Chou（Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, National Dong-Hwa University）；Hiewu Su（Department of Accounting, National Dong-Hwa University）

Abstract

The past studies of the efficacy of religion in relation to mental health appear to have some conflicting results. The present study broadens the construct of religion to include both religious behavior and the concept of spirituality, and the construct of mental health to include psychological well-being and prosocial behavior. Three waves of questionnaire data were collected across Taiwan, resulting in a final sample of
412 full-time Taiwanese college students classified into four self-reported religious orientations: Buddhist, Christian, Taiwanese folklore follower and no-religion. The statistical procedures of ANOVA and covariance structure analysis are used to provide the empirical basis for the  conclusions.
The self-reported religious orientation appears to have a strong significant effect with respect to displaying religious behavior and degree of spirituality, a weak albeit significant effect on the degree of psychological well-being, and virtually no significant effect on prosocial behavior. The results from covariance structure analysis indicate that both the direct effect of religious behavior on prosocial behavior and the indirect effect through spirituality on prosocial behavior have gained empirical support. The religious behavior factor seems unable to account for the psychological well-being aspect of mental health. When the religion construct is replaced by the spirituality concept alone, a strong indirect link between religion and prosocial behavior is found through the mediating effect of psychological well-being. There is no direct causal relationship found between spirituality and prosocial behavior. 

Keywords: mental health, religion, spirituality