ORIGINAL ARTICLE Spirituality as predictor of depression, anxiety and stress among engineering students Ajit Singh Negi 1 & Ashu Khanna 2 & Rajat Aggarwal 3 Received: 14 March 2019 /Accepted: 23 May 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Aim The purpose of present study is to examine the impact of aspects of spirituality on stress, anxiety, depression among engineering students. Subject and method Data were collected from 914 engineering students of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. A self- administered questionnaire and DASS-21 scale were used to measure spirituality and depression, anxiety, stress in current study. Pearson correlation is used to examine the relationship between spirituality dimensions and stress, anxiety, depression; multiple regression is used to examine the most influencing spirituality dimension; independent sample t-test is used to examine the gender difference in spirituality, stress, anxiety, depression among engineering students. Result Findings of the study propagated the positive and significant relationship between universal consciousness and anxiety of engineering students. Conclusion The most influencing spirituality dimensions are relationship with self and relationship with others. The sense of spirituality of female students is stronger than that of male students. Keywords Spirituality . Depression . Anxiety . Stress . Correlation . Regression Introduction The most prevalent psychological distress among university students are stress, anxiety and depression. Many research studies have examined whether student’ s performance are af- fected by the symptoms of stress (Dusselier et al. 2005), anx- iety (Anson et al. 1984) and depression (Stark and Brookman 1994). The main causes of depression among students are homesickness, pressure of achieving higher academic grade, hope for safe and better future (Buchanan 2012). These psy- chological conditions generate unpleasant experiences which impede the level of functioning and disrupt the mental state of a student (Bayram and Bilgel 2008). Although psychological health problems affect society as a whole, young people are severely affected by psychological distress in comparison to the general population (Adewuya et al. 2006; Daniel 2013; Kumaraswamy 2013). Young stu- dents frequently encounter multiple challenges associated to their academics, personal and social life (Dyrbye et al. 2006). Young adults face multiple stressors such as academic de- mand, pressure to succeed, financial burden, workload, expec- tation of parents and teachers and future worries are suscepti- ble to psychological distress in students and adversely affect their overall performance. Young people also experience be- havioral, economic, sexual, social, academic and emotional conflict in this stage of identity formation (Kaya et al. 2007). Therefore, this challenge intensifies imbalance, loneliness, self-centeredness, lack of commitment and degradation of hu- man values in human beings. A spiritually evolved youth can effectively moderate the consequence of psychological distress. The unwavering guid- ance of universal consciousness is essential for the younger generation to negotiate the demanding uncertainties of the materialistic world. Spirituality expresses as Bone’ s ability to * Ajit Singh Negi ajit_prudent11@yahoo.co.in 1 Applied Science and Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India 2 Polymer and Process Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India 3 Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India Journal of Public Health: From Theory to Practice https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-019-01092-2