Spiritual Care and Pregnant Women: A Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Spiritual care is an intervention based on the client's potential power of faith and spirituality, in order to empower him to use spiritual resources, in order to deal with critical situations, including pregnancy. Physical and mental changes during pregnancy make women mentally vulnerable. The purpose of this study is to review the researches done about the effect of spiritual care on pregnancy stress and anxiety.

Methods: In this study, to find articles, search databases, Google Scholar; Iran Medex; Magiran; SID and using a combination of Persian keywords Spiritual care, Spirituality, Pregnant women, Childbirth and their English equivalent in databases, Embase, Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus without time limit were searched. From a total of 28 articles obtained after careful review in terms of providing duplicate results, 15 articles were selected and finally 7 articles in terms of inclusion and exclusion criteria in this study were included and reviewed.

Results: In general, it can be said that the number of studies conducted in recent years focusing on the effect of spirituality on pregnancy and childbirth is limited. The results of studies have shown that spiritual care can reduce stress, anxiety, depression and even increase the quality of life of pregnant women.

Conclusion: Spirituality can help people to evaluate negative events in a different way, this first creates a sense of control over oneself and the environment, and then reduces anxiety, stress and increases the quality of life.