Relationship between Spiritual Health and Mothers' Care Burden on the Anxiety of Children with Chronic Diseases

Patients with chronic diseases need a lot of care and impose a lot of care burden on the family. Spiritual health is the central core of human health and can reduce the burden of care and anxiety levels. The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between spiritual health and the care burden of mothers on the anxiety of children with chronic diseases.

The present descriptive-correlational study was conducted on 108 children with chronic diseases admitted to Be'sat Hospital in Hamedan, Iran, and their caring mothers in 1401. The samples were included in the study by the available sampling method. The research tools included a demographic questionnaire, Polotzin and Ellison (1982) spiritual health questionnaire, modified Keegan Wells Cancer Child Care Questionnaire (2002), and Spence Children's Anxiety Questionnaire (1998) child version. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24 software.

In the present study, most of the mothers (52.8%) had high spiritual health (94.46±19.37) and average care burden (total care burden score 50.04) and children had low anxiety levels (total anxiety score 27.66). The findings showed that spiritual health had an inverse relationship with care burden, and with the increase in spiritual health, the care burden of mothers decreased (P=0.003). Also, the anxiety level of children increased with the increase in the care load and it showed a direct relationship between these two components (P=0.003). Children's anxiety level had an inverse relationship with mothers' spiritual health, so that with the increase of mothers' spiritual health, the level of children's anxiety decreased (P<0.001).

Spiritual therapy can affect the care burden of mothers and reduce their care burden. It can also be said that the amount of anxiety in children decreases with the reduction of mothers' burden of care.