Investigating the Effects of Spiritually Multidimensional Psychotherapy on the Patients' Anxiety after Bypass Surgery

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of multidimensional spiritual therapy for reducing patients' anxiety after cardiac bypass surgery. The study utilized a quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design and follow-up with a control group. The statistical population of this study included patients who had coronary artery bypass surgery and were referred to the Rehabilitation Center of Tehran Heart Hospital in 2018. Thirty patients who scored high for anxiety on the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DAS-21) questionnaire were selected by convenience sampling and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group was exposed to an independent variable (multidimensional spiritual intervention) for ten 90-minute sessions in the hospital rehabilitation center. The results of repeated measurement test showed that there was a significant difference in the anxiety scores for the experimental and control groups in the pre-test, post-test, and one-month and three-month follow-up stages. In addition, there was a significant difference in the pretest-posttest in the spiritual group. There was no significant difference in post-test scores between one-month and three-month follow-ups. Reducing negative emotions by multidimensional spiritual therapy plays an important role in preventing the more severe complications of heart disease, therefore, interventions based on the results of this study are recommended for heart patients.IntroductionCardiovascular diseases, with 11 million deaths per year, are the most important cause of disability and death in the world (Alrawi & Alrawi, 2017). A large number of coronary artery disease (CHD) patients who do not respond to drug treatments undergo coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) (Amjadian et al., 2018). This surgery is accompanied by psychological reactions such as stress, anxiety, and depression. As disturbing factors in treating patients, it affects patients' quality of life, recovery after surgery, the efficiency of ...