Spiritual intelligence and its related factors in patients with ischemic heart disease

Background and Purpose: Diagnosing coronary artery disease can cause considerable impairment in patients' mental health. On the one hand, psychological factors play an important role in the development and progression of heart disease. Therefore, identifying the factors affecting the patient's ability to adapt such as spiritual intelligence (SI) is significant. The study aims to determine the status of spiritual intelligence and its related factors in patients suffering from ischemic heart disease. Methods: This study community consists of the patients with ischemic heart disease hospitalized in cardiac ward of Dr.Heshmat Hospital; 186 patients were selected by accessible sampling method. Data were collected by spiritual intelligence 29-item questionnaire and analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics (t-test, ANOVA and Pearson). Results: In this study, the majority of the samples were in the age range of 45-64 years old (68/8%), men (67/2%), married (99/5 %), with elementary education level (51/1%) and housewives (29%). The results implied that more than 90% of the patients had high spiritual intelligence. Also based on the statistical analysis, no significant association has been observed between the demographic variable and spiritual intelligence. Conclusion: It seems that high spiritual intelligence in the community resulted from stress induced illness leading to their greater tendency to spirituality. In general, according to the psychological literature, spiritual intelligence can promote the patients' mental and physical health. Then, paying attention to spiritual intelligence in these patients seems to be critical.