The Role of Religious Coping in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Abstract The hospitalization of newborn infants causes their parents to suffer stress, depression, feelings of powerlessness, emotions of shock, worry, fear, anguish, anxiety, and loneliness interspersed with those of faith, joy, and hope. Religion may provide a framework for understanding emotional and physical suffering and can facilitate perseverance or acceptance in the face of stressors. Religious coping is a religiously framed cognitive, emotional, or behavioral response to stress that encompasses multiple modalities and goals, as well as positive and negative dimensions. Gaining meaning in life can serve many purposes, including closeness to Allah, hope, peace, connection with others, personal growth, and personal restraint. Spirituality emerges as an “intensification of human experience” from any birth, not just out of ordinary situations. The significant differences in some spiritual issues indicate the need to consider the spirituality of both parents. In this article, we reviewed the role of religious coping in the neonatal intensive care units to attract attention to the importance of religious coping for parents whose infants are hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit.