A Comparative Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Breathing Exercise-Anuloma Viloma and Mindfulness Meditation in Reducing the Level of Anxiety Among Cancer Patients in Selected Cancer Hospital of Delhi/ NCR

Abstract

Introduction: Cancer and anxiety often go hand in hand, as dealing with cancer can be an incredibly stressful experience.  Anxiety is prevalent among cancer patients, and cancer care providers frequently need to identify and treat it at first. Given the threat posed by cancer, it is sense that many patients experience anxiety. Regretfully, anxiety can occasionally develop into a clinically significant issue on its own, and it should be dealt with appropriate interventions.

Aim: The current study is a comparative study to evaluate the effectiveness of breathing exercise Anuloma-Viloma and mindfulness meditation in reducing level of anxiety among cancer patients in selected cancer hospital of Delhi/NCR.

Material and methods: A pre-experimental comparative two groups pre-test post-test design was used in the study. Purposive sampling technique was used in the study. The sample consists of 50 admitted cancer patients (25 cancer patients for breathing exercise Anuloma-Viloma group and 25 cancer patients for mindfulness meditation group) in a selected cancer hospital. Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) was used as a tool to assess the anxiety level. The data was analysed and interpreted as per objectives and the research hypothesis stated. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis.

Results: Results showed that there was significant difference between mean post test scores of cancer patients in breathing exercise Anuloma Viloma group (19.88) and mindfulness meditation group (19.16) for level of anxiety score as obtained ‘t’ value (0.386) was lower than the tabulated value (1.06) for df (48) at 0.05 level of significance.

Conclusions: The study concluded that both the interventions i.e., Breathing exercise Anuloma-Viloma and Mindfulness meditation are effective in reducing the level of anxiety among cancer patients. There was no significant difference between the effectiveness of both the interventions in reducing the level of anxiety of cancer patients which means both are equally effective. It is also concluded that there was no significant association between the level of anxiety and selected demographic variables.