Background:
The public health level and life quality in patient with cancer and their caregivers is very important. Considering to four dimensions of health including bio-psycho-social and spiritual aspects with united viewpoint that recommended by World Health Organization (WHO) is required for increasing the health level and improving the life quality of patients and their care providers. Among these, spiritual- psychical dimension has key role in decreasing the mental tensions and stresses and increasing the hope, pleasure and life satisfaction as well as coping with diseases and their complications in patients and their care givers. On the other side, providing the list of spiritual health skills and items according to culture of patients is a necessary task.
Methods:
In this study, during two years we evaluated the major religious and cultural texts and articles of Iran population with Persian and Arabic language. Then we provided the list of spiritual skills and effective items in spiritual health according to Iranian- Islamic culture of Iran people that are: Praying, recourse to prophets, thanksgiving, patience, Trust on God, altruism, to go on religious places such as masques and pilgrimage and performing the religious action and rituals. Then this study performed in 12 researches at two cities including Tehran and Zanjan on women aged 25 – 60 years with breast cancer including stage 3 and less, during six months after diagnosing by psycho-oncology group of Cancer Research Center of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Science. Also this study was done as group therapy in the form of Psycho-Education.
Result:
With considering to performed study, there was not significant deference between spiritual skills and religious items according to Iranian – Islamic culture (Shie) to other cultures and international provided protocols; however, recourse to celestial prophets such as messengers and Imams (according to Imamieh opinions that is the formal and prominence religious of Iran) and to going on pilgrimages which are the tombs of Imams is more significant than other Islamic group. On the other hand, the level of general health and life qualification in all 12 performed researches on women with breast cancer has increased significantly.
Conclusion
With regard to Iran community that is a religious-spiritual society, considering the spiritual dimension for improving the public health of Iran population, especially patients with cancer is very important issue. The results of this 12 performed researches demonstrated that introduced items in study that were coincident to Iranian- Islamic culture of Iran population resulted in increasing the spiritual-psychic health level and life quality of women with breast cancer.