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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Positive Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1346661

The effect of a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) program on the spiritual health of mothers of infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)

Provisionally accepted
Reihane Shahrbabaki Moghimian Reihane Shahrbabaki Moghimian 1,2Naeime Arasteh Naeime Arasteh 2*Monirsadat Nematollahi Monirsadat Nematollahi 3Atefe Ahmadi Atefe Ahmadi 3Behnaz Bagherian Behnaz Bagherian 3*
  • 1 Department of Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
  • 2 MSc in pediatric nursing, reproductive health, family and population research center , Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran, Kerman, Iran, Iran
  • 3 Associate Professor, reproductive health, family and population research center , Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran, Kerman, Iran, Iran

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The birth and admission of a premature infant to the NICU is often an unexpected experience and a mental and spiritual challenge for families. Improving the mother's spiritual health requires cognitive therapy approaches, including mindfulness techniques. To this end, the present study sought to investigate the effect of a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) program on spiritual health in mothers of infants admitted to the NICU.This quasi-experimental study was conducted using a pre-test-post-test design in two intervention and control groups. The participants were 50 mothers of infants admitted to the NICU of Afzalipur Hospital, Kerman, who were selected via convenience sampling and randomly divided into two control and intervention groups (25 mothers in each group). The intervention involved providing counseling using a short-term mindfulness-based cognitive therapy program carried out in four 2-hour sessions for the participants in the intervention group. The participants in the control group received routine NICU care. The participants in both groups completed a demographic information questionnaire and the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS) (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1982) before and after the intervention. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS-25 software.The data showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of demographic characteristics (P>0.05). Moreover, the mean score of spiritual health in the intervention group was 92.80±12.14 and that of the control group was 92.16±16.35 before the intervention. The mean score of spiritual health in the intervention group was 104.04 ± 6.60 and that of the control group was 92.56 ± 16.35 after the intervention. The results of the paired samples t-test revealed a statistically significant difference in the mean scores of spiritual health and its dimensions before and after the intervention in the intervention group (P˂ 0.001).The findings from the present study indicated that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy intervention was effective in improving the spiritual health of mothers with infants admitted to the NICU. NICU nurses can use mindfulness-based cognitive therapy as a practical intervention to improve the spiritual health of mothers of premature infants and promote the sense of meaningfulness and meaning of life in these mothers.

    Keywords: Cognitive Therapy, mindfulness, Spiritual health, Mothers, infants, neonatal intensive care unit

    Received: 24 Feb 2024; Accepted: 15 May 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Shahrbabaki Moghimian, Arasteh, Nematollahi, Ahmadi and Bagherian. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Naeime Arasteh, MSc in pediatric nursing, reproductive health, family and population research center , Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran, Kerman, Iran, Iran
    Behnaz Bagherian, Associate Professor, reproductive health, family and population research center , Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran, Kerman, Iran, Iran

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