The Effectiveness of Group Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy Using a Religious Approach on Improving the Quality of Life in Bereaved Mothers

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of group grief counseling and grief therapy using a religious approach on improving the Quality of Life (QOL) in bereaved mothers. In this study a quasi-experimental design with pretest- posttest and experimental and control groups were used. The data gathering instrument was Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). The population of this study included bereaved mothers who had at least 3 months and maximum one year of bereaved history with one standard deviation QOL score below the population mean. By volunteer sampling 18 bereaved mothers were selected and assigned randomly to experimental and control groups. Then, the experimental group received 10 weekly sessions (90 minutes) of intervention. The results of variance analysis showed that the differences between experimental and control groups in QOL score were significant; Thus, intervention improved QOL in bereaved mothers. Results showed that group grief counseling and grief therapy using a religious approach is an effective therapy for improving QOL in bereaved mothers.