Effectiveness of Spiritual group Therapy with an Islamic approach on decreasing the anxiety and worry of the female students with generalized anxiety disorder

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of Spiritual group Therapy with an Islamic approach on decreasing the anxiety and worry of the female students with generalized anxiety disorder in Lorestan University. This is Semi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest control group. Statistical population of this study contained all female students with generalized anxiety disorder in Lorestan University in academic years 1394-95. With a single-stage cluster sampling method 512 students completed the generalized anxiety disorder questionnaire. Then, according to the cutoff point of questionnaire, students were qualified enter the stage of clinical interview, Eventually 34 students with generalized anxiety disorder were selected that Assigned the control (n=17) and experimental (n=17) groups. Spiritual group Therapy with an Islamic approach was implemented for the experimental group in 8 sessions. The Beck anxiety and Pennsylvania Worry inventories were used to collect data in two conditions (pretest and posttest). The results were analyzed with SPSS software (ver 23) and using ANCOVA. Results showed that the mean of anxiety and worry scores in the experimental group was significantly lower than the control group in the posttest stage. The results of this study indicate that Spiritual group Therapy with an Islamic approach can be used to reduce symptoms of anxiety and worry in patients with clinical symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder.