Abstract

Introduction: Anxiety is one of the most prevalent psychiatric symptoms before cesarean section in women, and as providing comfort and convenience for patients is of paramount importance in nursing, the researcher sought to examine the effect of Benson relaxation on anxiety before cesarean section in nulliparous women. Materials and Methods: In this -experimental study pretest-posttest control group, 60 nulliparous women who were candidate for cesarean section were selected using purposive sampling, and were then randomly assigned into two groups of intervention (n = 30) and control (n = 30). The data collection tools were demographic information questionnaire and Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory. In the intervention group, Benson's relaxation was performed twice, each with a duration of 15 minutes and at intervals of 2 hours. In the control group, routine therapeutic care was performed without any relaxation intervention. Data were analyzed using SPSS 21 and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, paired t-test and independent t-test. Results: The resulting data showed that there was no significant difference between the intervention and control groups before the intervention in terms of anxiety level. The anxiety level after the intervention in the intervention group was lower than the control group, which was statistically significant (p <0.001). Conclusion: The results of this study showed that Benson relaxation method alleviated the anxiety before cesarean section in nulliparous women of cesarean section. Therefore, it is suggested that this method be used to reduce the pre-cesarean anxiety in nulliparous women.