When experiencing stressful situations, carrying the burden on your shoulders can have a detrimental effect on your spiritual health. Trying to manage stress and fulfill your daily responsibilities can leave you feeling spiritually drained. Spiritual wellbeing is an important factor in how you cope with illness and recover from it. Mental health indicators are largely dependent on spiritual wellbeing.
Identifying a patient's spiritual needs and applying the right care methods can reduce the complications of mental disorders in chronic patients. Researchers have taken an interest in the role of spiritual ties and religious beliefs in relation to managing pandemic stress in some parts of the world. Saudi citizens scored significantly higher on the anxiety scale compared to other nationalities, and the average differences were not statistically significant on the stress scale or on spiritual connections. It would be beneficial to research the moderating role of spirituality between religious beliefs and mental health symptoms in the context of crisis events.
The internal consistency calculated from these data is acceptable with Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the stress scale (α %3D 0.8) and for anxiety (α %3D 0.8). Some of the implications of this research are to explore which aspects of spirituality are most beneficial for people to cope with reactions to stress when faced with chaotic situations. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, stress and anxiety became widespread among the masses due to high morbidity and mortality. While the benefits of spirituality and religion for mental health have been described in previous publications (Weber and Pargament, 201 in normal times), the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was unique in many ways.
The data collection questionnaires included a demographic information form, a standard DASS-21 questionnaire for stress, anxiety and depression, and a 20-item spiritual health questionnaire from Palutzian and Ellison. Participating women scored significantly higher on the anxiety, stress and spiritual connections scales compared to men (p %3 0,000). However, qualitative data can help us understand the complex nature of the relationship between spiritual experiences, religious practices and mental health. In many regions of the world, people interpreted this event as a punishment from God or from a higher power which could exacerbate symptoms of anxiety or stress.
Currently, there is limited data on the religious and spiritual experiences of people from diverse social and religious backgrounds. The study reinforces mental health promotion by enriching various personal and community resources, including spirituality. The greater trust in spiritual connections could be due to increased levels of stress and anxiety symptoms experienced by women surveyed.
