Psychological distress, spirituality and Quality of Life in cardiac patients

Objectives: To find the relationship and impact of psychological distress, spirituality and quality of life in cardiac patients. Methodology: This cross sectional was carried outin eight months at Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lahore and DHQ Hospital, Sahiwal, Pakistan. Sample was included cardiac patients on medicines, both males and females with duration of at least one year. Cardiac patients with any kind of cardiac procedure, cardiac problem for less than one year, with any psychological illness and taking any kind of psychological treatment were excluded from study. Kessler's Psychological Distress Scale, Spiritual Assessment Inventory and WHO Quality of Life-BREF were administered for data collection. For data analysis ANOVA were computed with SPSS. Results: Study sample comprised of 160 patients (100 females and 60 males) with the age range of 40-60 years. More females than males and working than non-working and patients belonging to lower family income and with higher age had high level of psychological distress. Spirituality had not play significant role to increases quality of life due to cultural diversity and many other factors as lack of proper awareness about spirituality, lack of spiritual practices, high level of psychological distress, severe financial and familial issues and age etc. Conclusion: Psychological distress, spirituality and quality of life had significant relationship among cardiac patients. Counseling strategies could be designed to deal with this and to increase awareness of spirituality, which can lead to the higher quality of life.