Relationship between Spiritual Health and Stress, Depression, and Anxiety in Hemodialysis Patients

Chronic diseases confront the patients with questions about the meaning and purpose of life. This study aimed to determine the relationship between spiritual health and stress, depression, and anxiety in hemodialysis patients of Birjand Special Diseases Center in 2019.

In this cross-sectional study, using the census method, all dialysis patients referred to Birjand Special Diseases Center, Iran, were enrolled. A three-part questionnaire was used to collect information in this study. The first part deals with patient demographic information (age, gender, marital status, degree, occupation, duration of dialysis per week, and medical history), the second part includes the DASS21 standard questionnaire and the third part includes the Ellison-Palutzian spiritual health standard questionnaire. Data analysis was performed by the Mann-Whitney, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient.

In this study, 119 hemodialysis patients were studied, of which 77 (64.7%) were male. The mean depression, anxiety and stress of the participants in the study were 18.8 ± 7.52, 16.43 ± 7.13 and 19.36 ± 8.31, respectively. The mean spiritual health of the patients studied was 82.37 ± 12.12. The results showed that there was a significant (P<0.05) inverse relationship between spiritual health and depression, anxiety and stress in the patients studied.

The findings showed patients with higher spiritual health scores experienced less anxiety, stress and depression. So that, more focus should be on improving the spiritual health of hemodialysis patients by medical staff in the process of admitting and dealing with them in hospitals and medical centers.