Effectiveness of Spiritual Therapy on Cognitive Avoidance, Psychological Distress and Loneliness Feeling in the Seniors Present at Nursing Homes

Introduction: Getting away from the family center can lead to psychological and emotional harm to the elderly. The present study was conducted aiming to investigate the effectiveness of Spiritual Therapy on cognitive avoidance and psychological distress in the elderly are present at nursing homes in the city of Isfahan. Method: The research method was quasi-experimental with pretest, posttest and control group design. The statistical population was all elderly are present in Sadeghieh nursing home in the city of Isfahan in 2018. 30 elderly were selected through purposive method and randomly replaced into experimental and control groups (15 in the experimental and 15 in the control group). The experimental group received eight ninety-minute sessions of therapy interventions related to spirituality during two months once a week while the control group didn’t receive any intervention. Then the people in both groups took the posttest. The applied instruments included cognitive avoidance questionnaire (Sekston and Dougas, 2008) and psychological distress questionnaire (Kesler et.al, 2003) a. After collecting questionnaires and extracting raw data, the data analysis was done through descriptive statistics and ANCOVA method. Results: The results of the study showed that spiritual therapy has significant effect on cognitive avoidance and psychological distress of the elderly are present at nursing home in the city of Isfahan (p<0.001) in that this therapy was able to decrease cognitive avoidance and psychological distress of the elderly are present at nursing home in the city of Isfahan. Conclusion: According to the findings of the present study it can be concluded that spiritual therapy using techniques such as Accountability, giving things to God and strengthening the will and eradicating negative thoughts can decrease the level of cognitive avoidance and psychological distress of the elderly are present at nursing home. Therefore spiritual therapy can be applied as an efficient therapy to decrease the level of cognitive avoidance and psychological distress of the elderly are present at nursing home.