Spiritual monachopsis modestly associated with depressive symptoms in cross-sectional study of 550 Turkish university students

A cross-sectional study of 550 undergraduate students at Bayburt University in Türkiye found a modest positive association between spiritual monachopsis and depressive symptoms. Spiritual monachopsis was associated with Beck Depression Inventory-II scores even after adjustment for sex, age, year of study, grade point average, spiritual orientation and spiritual psychological robustness. The results provide preliminary evidence of an incremental statistical association, not evidence that spiritual monachopsis causes depression or that the measure has clinical utility.

The voluntary, nonprobability sample included 319 women, or 58.0%, and 231 men, or 42.0%. Most participants were aged 20–25 years (66.7%), and 72.5% were first-year students. The study was independent of the sample used in the earlier development of the Turkish Spiritual Monachopsis Scale. All 550 records were complete for demographic variables and scale items. Data were collected online from February 16 to May 8, 2026.

Participants completed four established Turkish-language measures: the 18-item Spiritual Monachopsis Scale, which assesses displacement within relationships involving the divine, a belief system and a religious social environment; the 16-item Spiritual Orientation Scale; the 16-item Spiritual Psychological Robustness Scale; and the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory-II, which measures depressive symptoms during the preceding two weeks. The spiritual monachopsis total score ranges from 18 to 90, with higher scores indicating greater spiritual monachopsis. BDI-II scores range from 0 to 63, and the categories associated with those scores indicate symptom severity rather than clinical diagnoses.

Spiritual monachopsis had a small positive correlation with BDI-II scores, with Pearson’s r = 0.223 (Holm-adjusted p < .001; 95% confidence interval, 0.143–0.306). A rank-based Spearman analysis produced a similar result, with ρ = 0.257 (p < .001). Spiritual orientation and spiritual psychological robustness did not have statistically significant correlations with depressive symptoms. The three spiritual measures were also nearly uncorrelated with one another, with correlation coefficients ranging from −0.02 to 0.01.

The primary analysis used a three-step hierarchical regression with heteroskedasticity-consistent HC3 standard errors. Demographics accounted for 3.5% of the variance in observed BDI-II scores. Adding spiritual orientation and spiritual psychological robustness increased model R² by 0.004, a nonsignificant increment (p = .312). Adding spiritual monachopsis increased R² from 0.039 to 0.085, corresponding to an additional 4.6 percentage points of observed variance (ΔR² = 0.046, p < .001). Its adjusted standardized coefficient was positive, β = 0.217 (HC3 95% confidence interval, 0.129–0.304; p < .001).

Bootstrap analyses supported the stability of the regression results within the dataset. The bootstrap 95% confidence interval was 0.137–0.300 for the standardized spiritual monachopsis coefficient and 0.018–0.087 for ΔR². Repeated 10-fold cross-validation, repeated 20 times, produced a mean out-of-sample ΔR² of 0.044. A supplementary parcel-based structural equation model retained a positive adjusted association for spiritual monachopsis, β = 0.231 (95% confidence interval, 0.136–0.326; p < .001), while the other two spiritual measures remained nonsignificant.

All three spiritual monachopsis subdimensions correlated positively with depressive symptoms. When the subdimensions were entered together with the demographic and positive-spirituality controls, only Religious Social Alienation retained an adjusted association, with β = 0.148 (bootstrap 95% confidence interval, 0.035–0.264; Holm-adjusted p = .043). However, differences among the three coefficients were not significant, and the subdimension model did not outperform the total-score model in repeated cross-validation. The exploratory results therefore do not establish Religious Social Alienation as the principal component or an explanatory mechanism. Measurement analysis also found limited convergent validity for that subdimension, with an average variance extracted of 0.377.

The findings are constrained by the cross-sectional design, which cannot establish temporal order, causality or mediation, and by the use of self-report measures, which may be affected by social-desirability and common-method biases. Recruitment from one university and the large share of first-year participants limit generalizability, while self-selection may have favored students more willing to disclose spiritual experiences. Religious affiliation, denomination, self-identified religiosity and frequency of specific religious practices were not recorded separately. Relevant contextual variables such as belonging, loneliness, perceived social support, stressful events and treatment history were also not measured independently. In addition, the BDI-II had lower internal consistency than the spiritual scales, with α = 0.722 and ω = 0.738, and neither of its item-level measurement models fit adequately. The study did not include an established religious-and-spiritual-struggles measure, so the distinctiveness of spiritual monachopsis from related constructs and its incremental value beyond those measures remain untested.

Subject of Research: Cross-sectional association between spiritual monachopsis and depressive symptoms among 550 undergraduate students at Bayburt University in Türkiye

Article Title: Spiritual monachopsis and depressive symptoms among university students in Türkiye: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Okur, S. (2026). Spiritual monachopsis and depressive symptoms among university students in Türkiye: a cross-sectional study. BMC Psychology, 14(1), Article 1489. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05803-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05803-9

Keywords: spiritual monachopsis, depressive symptoms, university students, Türkiye, cross-sectional study, spiritual orientation, spiritual psychological robustness, Beck Depression Inventory-II, hierarchical regression, Spiritual, monachopsis, depressive