Relationship between spiritual health, resilience, and happiness among a group of dental students: a cross-sectional study with structural equation modeling method

BACKGROUND: Given the importance of spiritual health, resilience and happiness to encounter challenges facing dental students, we aimed to examine these variables, their relationship and the mediating role of resilience between spiritual health and happiness among a group of Iranian dental students in Islamic Azad University of Isfahan. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, utilizing a stratified sampling method, 150 volunteer dental students in different academic years filled in the Persian version of Spiritual Well-Being scale, the Persian version of Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and Isfahan-Fordyce Happiness Inventory. Independent t-test, Kruskal–Wallis test, and Pearson correlation coefficient served for statistical analysis. In addition, we conducted a Structural Equation Modeling analysis. RESULTS: The mean age of the students was 23.43 ± 3.11, and 56% were women. The mean score of spiritual health, resilience, and happiness was 89.27 ± 16.69, 90.19 ± 15.03, and 295.17 ± 65.82, respectively. Spiritual health of a great majority of dental students was upper medium or high (87.3%), most of them had high level of resilience (69.3%), and 55.3% reported medium level of happiness. Spiritual health was directly associated with both happiness and resilience (p < 0.001). Resilience acted as an intermediary variable between spiritual health and happiness (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Spiritual health was associated with increased happiness, and this relationship was mediated by resilience. Thus, it is recommended to address the issue of spiritual health to those students with lower scores in order to increase their resilience and their level of happiness.