The Effectiveness of Spiritual and Existential Group Therapy on the Rates of Depression, Death anxiety and Afterlife Belief among Students: A Study Based on the Reports of People with Death Experience

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of spiritual and existential group therapy on depression, death anxiety and belief in afterlife. The research was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design and a control group. The population consisted of all undergraduates in the University of Isfahan in 2014. Then, 16 students with high depression scores from the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et al, 1961), high death anxiety scores from the Death Anxiety Scale (Templer, 1970) and low scores of afterlife belief from Islamic Belief about Fairly Afterlife (Golparvar et al, 2011) were selected via convenience sampling method. Then they were randomly assigned into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group participated in six sessions of group therapy while the control group did not receive any therapy. After post-test administration, the results of the covariance analysis showed a significant difference between post-test scores of the experimental and control groups on death anxiety (P<0.05). According to the results, it was concluded that combining existential and spiritual therapies along with descriptions of near-death experiences can have a significant impact on reducing death anxiety.