The effect of prayer on mental health of hemodialysis patients

Hemodialysis brings about difficulties in individuals’ mental health by causing disorder in the function and quality of life. Asking for religious help and prayer play a vital role in sickness acceptance and it causes positive treatment motivation through decreasing mental disorders. Among the important factors which lead to diseases, psychological problems as well as physical and social complications, one can mention to absurdity and uselessness as well as mental instability which is resulted from lack of spiritual dimension in peoples’ life. The present research aimed to review the effect of prayer on mental health of hemodialysis patients referring to Imam Reza Hospital of Amol City in 2009. This experimental study was conducted on 88 people under hemodialysis treatment (44 people as test group and 44 people as control group). The survey was done in Solomon desian. “Tavassol Prayer” was played periodically for the test group for 10 weeks in the mornings for 20 minutes. Then, mental health of both groups was evaluated by the spiritual health standard questionnaire of Palutzian & Ellison. The results were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics after entering data into statistical Software SPSS16. The findings showed mental health for the test group was 103±3 as a high level and for the control group as 93±10 in an intermediate level. Two ways ANOVA test showed a significant correlation between mental health of the test and control groups both in pretest and posttest (p< 0.01). In addition, this test also showed a significant correlation between the two groups who had only posttest (p<0.01). According to the results, it can be concluded that prayer is a suitable method to adapt with the disease. Because, not only it mitigates stress, but also, it improves health spirituality. Since, life approach of these patients is built on spirituality, it is necessary for physicians and nurses to know the key role of ideological beliefs in the patients’ life. Therefore, it is hoped that with the serious cooperation among the health team members in following the religious rituals, which are known as religious care today, we may see the effect of these cares and creation of peace feeling as well as rapid recovery in health condition of these patients.