A Sudy on Effectiveness of Teaching Spiritual Skills on Loneliness and Mental Health of First-year Female Students at Secondary Level

Reducing the sense of loneliness as a psychological ineffectiveness and promoting psychological safety as one of the basic human needs serve as crucial points for improving mental health for adolescents. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching spiritual skills on loneliness and mental health of first-year female students at secondary level. In terms of its purpose and nature of the study, the applied research adopted a semi-experimental approach with a pre-test/post-test/ follow-up design with control group. The statistical population of this research comprised all the first-year female students in Sari, Mazandaran, summing up to 3285 based on the education office statistics. The sample size was 44 selected according to the available sampling method and were randomly divided into two groups of 22 subjects. Before the beginning of the training, the two groups had a pre-test on Achroumill Vernshaw (1984) questionnaire of loneliness, and Maslow's psychological knowledge (2004), and then the subjects in experimental group attended ten training sessions (one hour per week) on spiritual skills, based on a special book of trainers, titled "Spiritual Skills Training" by Dr. Boolhari et.al. After the training, the post-test was taken at the end of the study, and after one month, the follow-up test was taken from both groups. To analyze the data, one factor analysis of covariance was used. The results showed a significant difference between the scores of the two groups in the post-test and follow-up test. Also, the effectiveness of teaching spiritual skills on mental health was more than that of loneliness. The more a person feels closer to God, believing that God loves his servants and bless them with compassion and mercy and helps them in difficulty, the more peaceful the person would be and negative emotions like loneliness will be reduced. The subjects learned the spiritual skills that God is the basis of safety, therefore, they would have a feeling of strength, and show a high self-esteem at the time of anxiety and fear based on the fact that they rely on God who has no defect. And with their own power, they are capable of doing everything and compensate the weaknesses of those who relied on them. Such person, from the point of view of psychological security, have a high self-esteem, security, and lack of concern for the future). Therefore, it is suggested that using psychological skills training such as self-awareness, trust, remembrance, forgiveness and problem solving increases the psychological variables and reduce negative emotions in students.