Efficacy of Spiritual Group Psychotherapy on the Infertility Consequences: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Infertility has mental, social, and reproductive consequences. Health professionals need to consider all aspects of holistic care when caring for women with fertility problems. The aim of this study is the unique impact of spiritual group therapy on the infertility consequences. This research is a randomized clinical trial from 800 infertile women who were referring to gynecological clinics of Jahrom University of Medical Sciences. Those who have inclusion criteria selected, then sampling continued by 63 people that randomly divided into two groups of experimental and control groups. The experimental group received 13 sessions of spiritual group psychotherapy. For gathering data used persian version of Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) to assessed psychological distress and Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) in pre- post test. Results showed the severity of psychiatric symptoms in the experimental group was lower than control group. There was significant difference in psychological distress (depression, anxiety, stress and worry) pretest-posttest between and within groups by repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA). Rate of pregnancy in experimental group was 4 (12.9%) and in control group was 1 (3.2%), but there wasnt significant difference between them. The findings indicated that the spiritual group therapy could decrease psychological severity symptoms. It seems to be, psychological interventions as a group education is a good choice for improved mental health among infertile women.