Comparison of the Effect of Aromatherapy With Essential of Damask Rose And Citrus Aurantium on the Anxaity of the Elderly People

Anxiety is mostly considered as one of the biggest issues in humans’ lives and its complications are obvious in their lives. On the other hand, the medical methods that are used to control anxiety can cause physical complications or drug dependence. Therefore, anxiety control is one of the important actions of nursing that can be handled by non-pharmaceutical methods such as aromatherapy. This study is done in order to compare the effects of aromatherapy using the essence of Rosa damascene and Citrus Aurantium on elderly peoples’ anxiety.

In this semi-experimental study 60 elder people were chosen by stochastic numbers and using the Excel RandBetween application after Obtain informed written consent. The elders inhaled the %10 Rosa damascene essence for three nights. Then, after a month of clearing period, they were under aromatherapy with the %10 Citrus Aurantium again. In each period, the variable of anxiety was measured by the Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS). The data were analyzed using the Paired sample T-Test, Independent T-Test, and the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test in the SPSS version 25 with the statistical significance of lower than 0.05.

Although the anxiety grade was improved during both aromatherapy courses (p<0.001), the variations of anxiety grades in the two mentioned courses of Rosa damascene and Citrus Aurantium didn’t have a statistical significance difference (p=0.729).

Aromatherapy using Rosa damascene and Citrus Aurantium essence can take part in elderly anxiety treatment.