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Introduction: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is the most common functional bowel disorder. Stress triggers or aggravates it's symptoms. This investigation is carried out to determine the effect of Benson relaxation therapy on anxiety level and severity of symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Materials and Methods: In this clinical trial 30 patients with irritable bowel syndrom were randomly divided into case and control groups. The control group was treated by only usual medical therapy but the case group was treated by combined medical- relaxational therapy. The two groups continued therapy for three months. Anxiety level and gastrointestinal symptoms of case and control groups were compared at three different times (two weeks before intervention and one week and three months after intervention). Also, patients were asked to document 6 common gastrointestinal symptoms in their daily symptom diaries, 2 weeks before intervention to 3 months after intervention. At the end of each week, these symptoms were compared in the two groups. Data was analyzed using chi square , Man - Whitney U and Wilcoxon tests. Results: Mean state and trait anxiety of the case and control groups two weeks before and one week after intervention did not show significant difference. But the results after 3 months showed a significant difference (p<0.001).The mean severity of gastrointestinal symptoms, 2 weeks before intervention, was significantly higher in case group, but the comparison of gastrointestinal symptoms severity, 1 week after intervention, did not show any significant difference between the two groups, and 3 months after intervention a significant difference was observed in the two groups (the control group had more severe symptoms than the case group). The comparison of 6 common gastrointestinal symptoms based on weekly self-report showed that abdominal pain, eructation and distention were significantly lower in case group, but there was no significant difference between diarrhea and constipation. Conclusion: Three months Benson relaxation therapy significantly decreased the state and trait anxiety level and severity of symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

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Background: There has been an increase in the number of women willing to have a caesarean birth because of their fear of childbirth. It seems the childbirth preparation educational class is a good way to remove or alleviate fears associated with pregnancy and childbirth.This research designed to identify the effect of childbirth preparation classes on childbirth fear on the primiparous women. Methods and Materials: The present study is a clinical trial which was carried out in 2007 at Milad Hospital, with 100 nulliparous pregnant women. Childbirth fear was measured by childbirth attitudes questionnaire. Normal pregnant women in the second trimester with childbirth fear score was 28 or more were randomly selected and dirided into experimental and control group with 50 subject in each qroup. The experimental group attended nine childbirth preparation class sessions and control group received routine antennal care. Results: The mean scored fear of childbirth in case and control group were 39.35±6.96 and 40.71±6.23 respectively. There was not significant difference between two groups. After the sessions, comparing childbirth fear score between two groups in third trimester showed the mean score of childbirth fear among experimental group was lower than control group (29.82+/- 7.18 compare to 38.03+/-9.27), and the differences statistically was significant (p<0.001). Mode of delivery was significantly different between the two groups. Conclusion: Primiparous women attended childbirth preparation classes acquired lower score of childbirth fear in compare to women received routine prenatal care. The results of this research showed relaxation training decreased childbirth fear and increased normal vaginal delivery.

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Background: Cardiovascular diseases are directly influenced by some specific psychological behaviors accompanied by stress and anxiety that in the long run increase cardiovascular diseases risk and bring about some complications. This study was carried out to examine the effects of relaxation and distraction training on anxiety reduction in cardiac patients,. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, sixty 40-65 year old patients with cardiac diseases were selected by convenience random sampling procedure and were randomly assigned to different experimental groups: 15 patients received relaxation training, 15 patients received distraction training, 15 patients received both relaxation and distraction training, and 15 patients stayed in the waiting list group. All participants completed STAI-S and STAI-T before and after the training program. Data were analyzed by factorial analysis of variance with repeated measures. Results: The results indicated that instruction of anxiety reduction techniques significantly decrease cardiac patients’ anxiety. There were no significant differences between the two genders. Also, there were no significant decreases between different educational levels and types of diagnosis in the anxiety reduction. Conclusion: Noticing the decrease in anxiety due to relaxation and distraction in patients hospitalized with cardiac diseases, the use of these techniques in all stages of prevention and treatment of coronary heart diseases seems necessary.