Effect of Pastoral Counselling and Social Support on the Management of Psychological Well-Being of Widows in Anglican Communion of Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

Widowhood is a catastrophic event at any stage of life for the surviving partner at any age, with serious repercussions on their  psychological well-being. Thus, this study examined effect of pastoral counselling and social support on the psychological wellbeing of  widows in Anglican Communion of Lagos State, Nigeria. Six research questions and hypotheses were generated and tested; data were  analyzed using descriptive statistics and ANCOVA. The quasi-experimental pretest/posttest control group research design was adopted.  The samples consisted of 92 widows. The first stage was the selection of one Anglican Diocese out of the four in Lagos State using simple  random sampling, through hat and draw method. The second stage involved using proportionate stratified random sampling technique  to select three Archdeaconries from the selected Diocese in Lagos state. The third stage involved selection of widows with psychological  wellbeing problems from each of the Archdeaconries selected using “The Bell Global Psychopathology Scale (BGPS)” and the “Widows'  Psychological Adjustment Scale (WPAS)” with 0.80 and 0.73 reliability coefficient respectively. The last stage involved purposive sampling  technique to select all 92 identified widows with psychological wellbeing problems into experimental groups and control group. The  Pastoral Counselling and Social Support were used as treatments in the experimental groups. The findings revealed that: There is  significant difference in the post-test mean scores on depression of participants exposed to experimental conditions and there is  significant difference in the post-test mean scores on anxiety of participants exposed to experimental conditions. Both pastoral  counselling and social support should be used in managing psychological wellbeing of widows.