The Correlation between Spiritual Health and Maternal-Fetal Attachment Behaviors in Pregnant Women Referring to the Health Centers in Qazvin, Iran

Spiritual health and maternal-fetal attachment behaviors are considered as beneficialcoping strategies used to adapt to pregnancy. The present study was conducted to determine thecorrelation between spiritual health and maternal-fetal attachment behaviors in pregnant womenreferring to health centers in Qazvin. The present descriptive correlational study was conducted on 200 pregnant women referring to health centers in Qazvin, in 2015. A multi-stage sampling was carried out and data were collected in a self-report manner, using the Persian version of Spiritual Well-Being scale developed by Paloutzian and Ellison, Persian version of Cranley’s maternal-fetal attachment scale, and a demographic and midwifery questionnaire. Data were analyzed in SPSS-20, using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and the multivariate linear regression. P The mean scores of attachment and spiritual health were 95.91±8.92 and 104.15±10.59,respectively. A weak positive correlation was observed between attachment behaviors and spiritualhealth (P<0.001, r=0.40). Regression analysis showed that spiritual health (P<0.001, β=0.40), religious health (P<0.001, β=0.30), and existential health (P<0.001, β=0.43) could predict the maternal-fetal attachment behaviors. The results showed that a higher spiritual health was associated with an increase inmaternal-fetal attachment behaviors. These results suggest the importance of strengthening spirituality during pregnancy as an effective strategy for increasing the attachment behaviors.