A spiritual intervention to reduce stress, anxiety and depression in pregnant women: Randomized controlled trial.

PREVENTION of mental depression; ANXIETY prevention; BLOOD pressure; PREGNANCY & psychology; ANALYSIS of variance; INTERVIEWING; FISHER exact test; SPIRITUAL healing; TREATMENT effectiveness; RANDOMIZED controlled trials; PSYCHOLOGICAL tests; T-test (Statistics); STRESS management; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; QUESTIONNAIRES; CHI-squared test; REPEATED measures design; STATISTICAL sampling; PSYCHOLOGICAL adaptation; DATA analysis software; COGNITIVE therapy; GROUP process; EVALUATION

We assessed the efficacy of a spiritually-integrated cognitive-behavioral educational group intervention for reducing stress, anxiety, depression, and blood pressure during pregnancy and improving delivery outcomes. A randomized controlled trial was conducted in 84 pregnant women randomly assigned to either the intervention or a control group. Demographic information was collected at baseline, along with measures of religiosity, stress, anxiety, depression, and blood pressure. Our intervention consisted of four 90-minute group sessions over 8 weeks that utilized a spiritually-integrated cognitive-behavioral approach to help participants cope with the stress of pregnancy. Stress, anxiety and depression scores in the intervention group decreased significantly by 41%, 28%, and 41%, respectively, from baseline to 3-month follow-up. There were also significant differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure between groups at the 3-month follow-up, favoring the intervention group. Between-group differences were also significant for these outcomes. Applying such spiritually-integrated intervention may help to improve the mental and physical health of young, healthy nulliparous pregnant women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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