The effectiveness of spiritual therapy on the quality of sleep, resilience, and death anxiety of the elderly

The multiplicity and variety of stresses that people face in old age have made it necessary to pay attention to the issue of mental health, especially resilience in the elderly people. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of spiritual therapy on the quality of sleep, resilience, and death anxiety of the elderly.

The present research was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest and control group. The statistical population of this study included all elderly people living in the nursing home in Shiraz in 2019. Out of them, 30 people were selected using the available sampling method and using simple randomization method assigned to two groups of spiritual therapy (n=15) and control group (n=15). The data were obtained using a resilience questionnaire (Connor-Davidson, 2003), Death Anxiety Scale (Collett Lester, 1969), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Questionnaire (Buysse et al, 1989). Data were analyzed using repeated measurement and ANOVA tests by SPSS software. The significance level of tests was considered to be 0.05. 

The results showed that spirituality therapy significantly improved the sleep quality (P-Value<0.001), resilience (P-Vvalue<0.001), and death anxiety (P-Value<0.001) in the experimental group. But the mean scores of sleep quality, resilience, and death anxiety did not not change significantly in the control group.

Based on the findings of this study, spirituality therapy can be used to improve the sleep quality, resilience, and death anxiety in elderly people.