Effect of Spirituality on Women's Resilience

Women play a fundamental role in the family and should have a high degree of flexibility and resilience in life issues and difficulties, and considering that the spiritual dimension is very important in the lives of people, the aim of this study was to review the effect of spiritual therapy on women's resilience.

For this review study, published sources were reviewed in Persian in the Magiran, SID, and Barakat databases and in English in the PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Embase databases. The keywords of spirituality, spirituality therapy, resilience and women were searched for in the period 2000 to 2021. Finally, of 144 articles searched, 9 articles related to the target were examined. The studies were divided into two groups according to the type of intervention. These two groups included individual and group spiritual therapies.

Studies conducted with women in crisis included 4 studies: a study of women in the Covid 19 pandemic, divorced women, women with drug-addicted spouses, and individuals whose family member was admitted to the intensive care unit. Another 4 studies investigated spiritual therapy in women suffering from certain diseases such as breast cancer, systemic lupus erythematosus, and multiple sclerosis. The results of the studies have shown that spiritual therapy increases resilience and improves attitudes and interpretation of illness and life.

In fact, spiritual therapy brings about inner peace and strengthens planning to achieve goals. Spirituality helps people to evaluate negative life events differently. As a result, spirituality creates a stronger sense of control, which in this way contributes to psychological adjustment. It is suggested that health care professionals and providers use this intervention to prepare educational packages to strengthen women's resilience in times of crisis and certain diseases such as cancer, systemic lupus erythematosus, and multiple sclerosis.