Effects of counselling and spiritual care program on anxiety in patients with chronic diseases: A systematic review and meta-analysis

One of the essential non-pharmacological treatments for patients with chronic diseases are psychosocial supports and counselling services such as spiritual psychotherapy. Although several preliminary studies represent the effects of counselling and spiritual psychotherapy on anxiety in patients with chronic diseases, there are various contradictions among the findings. The present meta-analysis aimed to determine the effects of counselling and spiritual care programs on anxiety in patients with chronic diseases. For data collection, various databases were searched regarding no time limitation until May 2021, including SID, MagIran, Embase, ProQuest, Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science (WoS) using Google Scholar search engine. Inclusion criteria were original research articles, interventional studies, and exclusion criteria were irrelevant assessments, systematic review and meta-analysis studies, case reports, letters to the editor, and duplicate papers. I-2 test was used to calculate heterogeneity of studies, and the Egger's test was applied to examine the publication bias. According to the inclusion criteria, 26 articles were selected among 612 initial papers with a sample size of 1040 individuals. The mean anxiety scores before and after the interventions were 33.02 +/- 3.77 and 25.27 +/- 3.66, respectively. The significant (P < 0.05) mean difference before and after the interventions was 1.74 +/- 0.23. Counselling and psychotherapy can reduce anxiety in patients with chronic diseases.