Effect of performing regular religious prayer-‘namaaz’ on psychological health among middle aged women

Abstract

‘Namaaz’ is the special prayer for the Muslims which requires submittance to Allah (God) and praying for the wellbeing of self and others. It is for the purpose of cleanliness of mind and soul. Muslims do Namaaz five times a day. This prayer involves some postural exercises and psychological aspects. Purpose: Present study was designed to find out the psychological health status of middle aged women who participate ‘Namaaz’ regularly and compare their status with others who do not participated in this prayer. Methodology: A total of 27 middle aged women (Mean age 51.48 yrs, ±6.00) were volunteered for this study. Among them 18 were participated Namaaz on regular basis (G1) and other 09 were not participated in Namaaz regularly (G2). Psychological stress was considered in this study for assessing psychological health. Standard SPSSI questionnaire was used to measure the psychological stress. Mean and standard deviation were computed to describe the parameter and t-test was used to analyze the mean deference between groups. Only 0.05 level of significance was considered for this study. Results: Results revealed that G1 group had lower mean value (64.28) for stress than the G2 group (67.00). But the difference between group means (t=1.30) was not statistically significant (p>0.05). Conclusion: From the above findings it was concluded that the middle aged women who participated in Namaaz on regular basis had not have better psychological health than the women who do not participate in this religious ritual regularly.