Exploratory Data Analysis to Identify the Relationship between Depression-Anxiety and Spiritual-Religious Factors among Undergraduate Students

The 3.8\% of the world population is affected by depression [1] which is considered the most common precursor to suicide [2]. In Mexico, suicide is a public health problem. Yucatan had a national rate of 10.2 suicides per 100,000 persons [3]. The PHQ-9 is a nine item self-report questionnaire which provides a depression score. On the other hand, the GAD-7 is a seven item self-report questionnaire whose purpose is to measure GAD. These questionnaires, along with a spiritual/religious self-conception survey, were applied to 160 undergraduate students. EDA was used in order to establish data patterns and data relationships [4]. Univariate and multivariate analysis demonstrate how information behaves and correlates. As part of the EDA, it was decided to use a quartile approach with the aim of balancing the number of students per class of depression and anxiety level. We observed that, consistently with what is usually reported in the literature, depression and anxiety are highly correlated (0.96). More so, there appears to be an inversely proportional relationship between depression/anxiety and spiritual/religious self-conceptions, with the exception of high anxiety individuals, who seem to be more associated with a highly spiritual self-conception (as opposite to a high religious one)