Spiritual Health of Mothers of Children with Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases: A Comparative Study

Spiritual health of most patients and their families is compromised when cancer is diagnosed. The aim of this study was to compare spiritual health in mothers with a child suffering from cancer and other chronic diseases.

This study was performed on 250 mothers of children with cancer and other chronic diseases referring to Shahid Sadoughi Hospital in Yazd in 2020. Data were gathered by demographic and Palutzian-Elison’s spiritual health questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and inferential tests (t-test, chi-square) were used for data analysis. Significance level was considered to be less than 0.05. In the present study, all the ethical considerations were observed and the authors reported no conflict of interests.

The spiritual health of mothers in the two groups was moderate. The mean spiritual health of mothers of children admitted to the pediatric ward (91.24±13.13) was higher than the mothers of children admitted to the oncology ward (85.84±12.67). The difference between them was significant (P=0.001). Also, a statistically significant difference was observed between the spiritual health of mothers of children aged12 years and older (with the mean of 97.00±11.86) based on the age of the child in the group of children admitted to the oncology ward based on the one-way ANOVA results (P=0.022).

Based on the findings, the spiritual health of mothers in the oncology ward was lower than the mothers of children with other chronic diseases in the pediatric ward. This finding highlights the need for necessary intervention to promote and improve the spiritual health of mothers in the oncology wards.