The effect of Spiritual Therapy on Psychological Resilience and the Spiritual Well-being of Caring for Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 1. Master of Cilinical Psychology,Department of Psychology,Science and Reasearch Branch,Islamic Azad University,Tehran,Iran. myavari6@gmail.com. https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-2624-6549

2 Master of general psychology, department of psychology, faculty of psychology and educational sciences, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

3 3. Department of clinical Psychology,Faculty of medical,Kermanshah unit,Islamic Azad University,Kermanshah,Iran. izaditahere.1370@yahoo.com. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7200-4957

4 Master of General Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Ardakan, Yazd, Iran. Majedehkhosravi1@gmail.comhttps://orcid.org/

5 5. Master student of general psychologist, Faculty of literature and Humanities Department of counseling, Rasht university, Rasht. Iran. mohadesehnazari32@gmail.com. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8245-8303

6 Payame noor University

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the effect of spiritual therapy on psychological resilience and the spiritual well-being of caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study was a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test post-test design with control and intervention groups. The statistical population of the study included all caregivers of patients, who were referred to Tehran's hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, for treatment between June and September 2021. Thirty caregivers who were willing to participate in the research were selected as the sample using purposive sampling and randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Each group of caregivers consisted of 15 individuals. Both experimental and control groups underwent a pretest on Conner & Davidson's (CD-RISC) Resiliency questionnaire and Spiritual well-being scale (SWBS). The experimental group received fourteen sessions of spiritual therapy (90-minute sessions twice a week), but the control group did not receive any spiritual therapy. In addition to descriptive statistics, Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the results and all analyzes were carried out using SPSS-18 software. Findings indicated that spiritual therapy showed a significant difference in the results among the two groups (P<0.001). Results showed significantly increased psychological resilience and the spiritual well-being mean scores of the caregivers in the experimental group compared to the control group after the intervention. Consequently, it is beneficial to implement practices to promote the psychological resilience and spiritual well-being of caregivers. This study provides important implications for clinical practice.

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