The effect of Ramadan fasting on depression as threatening factor of mental health

Background and Objective: Ramadan fasting has various effects on the physical and mental health of individuals. Depression is one of the most challenging disorders of mental health in the present age. Several studies have been done to investigate the effect of fasting on depression and other aspects of mental health. The data from these studies were scattered and non-centred, so we tried to collect these data regularly and make these surveys more obvious. Search method: The following article is a narrative review. In this study some articles were investigated by searching keywords like fasting and depression in advanced databases such as Google scholar, PubMed, NCBI, and SID. 8 of the relevant articles were selected, without any time limitation. Findings: Researches on fasting people, including ordinary citizens, students, depressed people, and individuals with other mental problems showed that fasting has positive effects on depression and mental health. Some articles have shown that Ramadan fasting may be ineffective or have bad effects on mental health. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that in general, Ramadan fasting has positive effects on depression and other mental disorders in different sexes and age groups.

Keywords:

Ramadan , Fasting , Mental health , Depression