Study to evaluate Benson’s Relaxation Therapy on reducing anxiety among antenatal mothers with high risk pregnancy admitted at antenatal ward of GMCH, Guwahati, Assam

Abstract

Background: Anxiety is very common during pregnancy, could be due to high risk pregnancy, history of miscarriage, history of anxiety or depression. High levels of anxiety during pregnancy have adverse effect on mother and baby. Aims: To identify the difference in level of anxiety after application of Benson’s Relaxation Therapy among antenatal mothers with high risk pregnancy Setting and design: The study was conducted in Guwahati Medical College and Hospital, Assam. Preexperimental research design was adopted for the study Materials and methods: 30 antenatal mothers with high risk pregnancy were selected by convenient sampling technique. Self administered structured questionnaire and Perinatal Screening Anxiety Scale (PASS) were used for data collection. Benson’s relaxation therapy was administered for 5 days. Validity and reliability were done. Statistical analysis: Data were analyzed through SPSS Version 24. The level of anxiety before intervention 19(63.3%) had severe symptoms of anxiety, 6(20%) had mild to moderate symptoms and 5(16.7%) were asymptomatic whereas after intervention 16(53.3%) were asymptomatic, 9(30%) had severe symptoms and 5(16.7%) had mild to moderate symptoms. Results: The mean score before intervention was 46.96±18.64 and after intervention was 32.06±18.53 with mean difference of 14.90. The calculated‘t’ value was 4.656, which was greater than table value indicates statistically highly significant. Conclusion: The study showed difference in level of anxiety between pre test and post test scores. Hence, this intervention is simple, effective, has mind-body approach to reduce anxiety among antenatal mothers with high risk pregnancy © This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.