The Effectiveness of Spirituality Therapy on Body Image Concern and loneliness in Nursing Students with Social Anxiety

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of spirituality therapy on body image concern and loneliness in nursing students with social anxiety.

This study was a quasi-experimental pretest - posttest with control group. The study population was consisted of all nursing students with social anxiety in Sari branch of Islamic Azad University. After screening, the sample consisted of 30 (15 for each group) nursing students with social anxiety that were selected by as a voluntary and randomly recruits to each of groups. Then, the participants in the experimental group participated in 8 sessions of 90 min of spirituality therapy, while the control group did not receive any therapy. Instruments for gathering data were Social and emotional loneliness scale for adults (SELSA) and Body Image Concern Inventory (BICI).Then, the data were analyzed using SPSS.v24 software and statistical tests such as MANCOVA.

The results indicate that the spirituality therapy had significant impact on body image concern (F=11.53, P=0.000) and loneliness (F=51.89, P=0.000) in nursing students with social anxiety.

Based on the findings of this study, intervention based on spirituality therapy improves body image concern and loneliness in nursing students with social anxiety and could be used as an effective interventional method.