Effects of complementary spiritual therapy on stress, anxiety, burnout syndrome and hematological parameters of professionals in a public hospital: a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Abstract Objectives This randomized controlled trial evaluated the stress, anxiety, and burnout of professionals exposed to complementary spiritist therapy (CST), which consists in therapeutic resources as prayer, Spiritist passe, fluidic water and spiritual education or control. Methods Seventy-six professionals were randomized to CST or control: to maintain the routine for 5 weeks. The ISSL scale, anxiety and depression Beck’s indices, Maslach instrument, subjective well-being and WHOQOL-BREF were used at baseline and five-week. Blood count and cytokine dosage were collected at baseline, one-week and five-week. Analysis using the intention to treat approach. Results The means of variation of stress (exhaustion phase) between baseline and five-week were −1.50 ± 3.31 in the CST and 0.72 ± 3.50 in the control (p=0.036), effect size for CST group was d=0.65, which is considered medium effect. CST showed decrease in emotional exhaustion and negative affects, and increase in lymphocytes, erythrocyte parameters and platelets between the baseline and five-week (p<0.05). Reduction in IL-1β and increase in total lymphocyte count were observed with 2–3 sessions per week, but that does not maintain when the number of sessions is decreased. Participants receiving ≥7 sessions reduced emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and stress, and improved hematological parameters throughout the study (p<0.05). Conclusions CST may be effective in reducing stress (exhaustion phase) compared to control. Higher frequency of interventions promotes better psychic state, evidenced by large effect size for emotional exhaustion in burnout, and improves hematological parameters of professionals. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT03356691.