Factors Causing Stress from the Perspective of Quran and Hadith

Background and Aim: The available psychological theories have mentioned different factors causing stress and on the other hand, very little attention has been paid to this issue from religious and spiritual perspectives. So, the aim of this study was to investigate the reasons of stress from the perspective of Quran and Hadith.

Methods: Qualitative method was used as the research method. In this study, conventional content analysis of Quran and Hadith was used. In the content analysis method, because of focusing on texts and documents, the term of "analysis resource selection" was used instead of research population. The Holy Quran, Mizan Alhekmeh, Hadith Al-Kafi, and Tafsire Mozoei of the Holy Quran from Javadi Amoli were used as the analysis resources. At first, the Quran experts’ opinions were merely used to extract the kind of terms and also to know how to extract them. Then, key words of stress in the Arabic language based on Islamic sources (including warn, painful, dire, liver, alboads, adversity, fear, sin, sorrow, tax, purchase, regret, sadness, joyless, abject) were identified. Through open coding, each of the units of analysis were imported to coding sheets. In the next step, through interviewing and providing an expert panel based on the categories extracted from the verses of the Quran and Hadith, 20 experts and psychologists who were familiar with religious sources were referred to. These experts and psychologist were asked to share their opinions and comments about categorizing components and prioritizing these categories. In order to achieve reliability between coders after having a clear definition of categories and training, three experts for coding were asked and the agreement (reliability) between coders was calculated to be 76 percent. Eventually, based on experts’ categories, a schematic conceptual model was extracted from them.

Results: The results showed that material pleasures (worldliness, and attachment to it), being hasty, turning away from the remembrance of God, lack of resilience, gossip, economic hardship, lack of attention to prayers, long ambitions, lack of fear of God, not being married, despair, ingratitude, jealousy and hatred are factors causing stress.

Conclusion: Based on the research findings, it can be concluded that from the perspective of religious sources, the mentioned factors are the main causes of stress. This means paying attention to these factors can help therapists and clients understand the nature of stress and to present treatment strategies.