The effects of Massage Therapy of Asthmatic Children on the Anxiety Level of Mothers referred to Isfahan Medical Centers in 2006

Asthma is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases of childhood which its outbreak is increased all over the world. Asthma influences on many family day life’s aspects. Caring of children by chronic Asthma can have a deep impact on health and welfare of the family members. Studies show that there is a relation between the living quality of children suffering from asthma and anxiety level of parents. The parents of asthmatic children are looking for ways to confront with their stress and reduce their anxiety in encountering with asthmatic children and improving their performance. This research has accomplished with the aim of determining the influence of massage therapy on anxiety level of mothers with asthmatic children. This research was an experimental study by making test and retests and was a two-stage prospective test. The samples of research were 60 people of mothers of asthmatic children by the age of 5-14 years old that had gone to Medical Centers of Isfahan. They were divided into two groups of control and massage therapy. The data were collected by standard Spielberger questionnaire. Sampling was done by the easy way and randomly division that divided them into two groups. Mothers of massage group were trained to massage head, neck, face, shoulder, hand, leg and back of their children every night before bedtime for one month and in the control group there was no intervention during this month except the standard treatment. In both groups the Spielberger standard questionnaire was filled by mothers and used for analyzing data by descriptive analysis, independent T-test, paired-T test, and Chi–square test. The results show that there was no significant difference between the anxiety mean level between two groups but there was a significant difference after intervention between two groups (P < 0.03). Also there was a significant change in mean level of anxiety score of mothers before and after the intervention in massage group (P < 0.001) and there was a significant difference between comparison of changing the mean level of anxiety score before and after the massage between two groups (P < 0.04). Considering to obtained data, it can be resulted that by effective utilization of daily child massage techniques we can reduce the anxiety level of mothers. Consequently, giving an active role to the mothers in caring and treating of child can lead to a reduction on the anxiety level of the mothers. Therefore, daily massage helped mothers to have more sense of participation in caring their children and as a treatment method can combine with drug treatment methods