Spiritual Emotional Freedom Technique against Anxiety and Psychological Well-being of Type 2 DM Patients during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic makes patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus experience an increase in anxiety, considering that diabetes mellitus is one of the dangerous comorbidities for people infected with the COVID-19 virus so that it affects their psychological well-being. Low psychological well-being will have an impact on decreasing self-care, thereby increasing the occurrence of complications. AIM: The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of the spiritual emotional freedom technique (SEFT) on anxiety and the psychological well-being of patients with type 2 DM during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: The research design employed is a quasi-experimental research with the untreated control group design with dependent pre-test and post-test samples. The sampling technique used is probability sampling which is a random sampling to meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria with a total sample of 110 respondents with the distribution of the intervention group consisting of 55 respondents and the control group consisting of 55 respondents. The instrument used to measure the level of anxiety is the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety and psychological well-being of Ryff’s psychological well-being. The statistical tests used are Paired Sample t-Test and Independent t-test with significant p < 0.05. RESULTS: The results showed that the mean level of anxiety in the intervention group before the implementation of the intervention was 21.89 (moderate), while after the intervention was 10.98 (mild) and the psychological well-being before the intervention was 147.49 (low), while after the intervention was 170.91 (moderate). Furthermore, in the case of the control group, the mean level of anxiety before the intervention was 19.16 and after the intervention was 19.11 and psychological well-being before the intervention was 146.67 while after the intervention was 146.45. Furthermore, the data analysis obtained that the SEFT affected the level of anxiety and psychological well-being of patients with type 2 diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic with p = 0.00. CONCLUSION: The SEFT that is routinely implemented can reduce the level of anxiety so that it can improve the psychological well-being of patients with type 2 DM during the COVID-19 pandemic.