The therapeutic effectiveness of vipassana and creative imagery for promoting wellness among nurses

• Main Author: Alookaran, Mary Lynn D.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1996
• Subjects: Therapeutics; Nurses > India; Mind and body therapies; Imagery (Psychology); Psychotherapy; Nursing
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/759
• Institution: De La Salle University

The study analyzes the therapeutic effectiveness of Vipassana and Creative Imagery combined therapy as compared to using either Vipassana or Creative Imagery as single therapy in promoting the psychological, social, and spiritual wellness among twenty single and female nurses of two hospitals in India.The pretest-posttest waitlist control group dependent (matched) design was used as outcome measures of the wellness variables. Four selected CPI scales--self-acceptance (Sa), self-control (Sc), psychological mindedness (Py), and well-being (Wb)--measured the level of psychological wellness. Another four CPI scales--sociability (Sy), social presence (Sp), empathy (Em), and tolerance (To)--measured the level of social wellness. After pretest one of the two matched randomly assigned groups, Group 1 (experimental) received the first intervention Vipassana. Group 2 served as the waitlist control after Vipassana. Both groups were given posttest 1 which was followed by the second intervention, i.e., Creative Imagery. Both the groups were exposed to Creative Imagery. Posttest 2 was administered after Creative Imagery.Two-way repeated measures (ANOVA), ANCOVA, and t-test for correlated samples were used for data analysis. Content analysis was done for the significant person's observation. The findings after Vipassana therapy indicated significant differences on three selected psychological factors of wellness-- self-control, psychological mindedness, well-being and three social wellness scales--sociability, empathy, and tolerance. The wellness measures, however, did not differ significantly.On the other hand, the findings of Creative Imagery as single therapy revealed significant differences on two spiritual wellness scales--religious well-being and spiritual well-being. No significant difference was found on the psychological and social wellness measures. The experimental group (Group 1) that had the intervention of Vipassana followed by Creative Imagery had high significant improvement at the level of all selected variables of psychological, social, and spiritual wellness. The experimental group differed significantly from the control group in all variables, except for self-control. These differences indicated the significant treatment effects of the combined therapy.The findings indicated that the psychological, social and spiritual wellness of the nurses were promoted by the combined therapy of Vipassana-Creative Imagery. The delayed posttest revealed no significant differences at the level of the nine wellness variables. The two scales--psychological mindedness and empathy-- decreased significantly. The findings forwarded that the effects of combined therapy of Vipassana-Creative Imagery were stable after one month for the nine areas of wellness.