The Efficiency of the God Mention Program in Reducing Anxiety

Abstract

Today, human beings still suffer from unknown anxiety in the depths of their existence in spite of the significant advances in the field of mental health and treatment techniques for mental disorders. The present research was conducted with the aim of investigating the efficiency of a treatment program of religious interventions in order to reduce anxiety, and with taking advantage of Islamic effective mentions and prayers. Research design is an experimental type with a pretest-posttest and a control group on the waiting list. The population was all male prisoners in Qom Central Prison; thus, 34 prisoners were selected from those with higher anxiety than normal, and were randomly placed in two test and control groups. Research tools included Cattle anxiety scale, a training protocol, and an Islamic mention program related to anxiety, and they were used during seven training sessions and 40-day practice, and its content validity was examined by 12 experts of Islam and psychology. According to the analysis of covariance, the average of anxiety scores of the test group compared to the control group in the posttest stage has significantly decreased (P<0.001). The results of this research showed that the mention of God relieves and decreases the anxiety. The mention program can be used as an effective factor in reducing generalized anxiety, and the the protocol of this program can be applied as a complementary treatment for anxiety disorders.

Keywords

• anxiety
• tension
• prayer
• prisoners
• religious interventions