The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-based Group Therapy on Perceived Stress, Emotional Cognitive Regulation, and Self-care Behaviors in Patients With Hypertension

Aims: Patients with high blood pressure usually experience high levels of stress that affect their emotion regulation and self-care behaviors. The current study aimed to examine the cognitive-minded group therapy on perceived stress, emotional, cognitive regulation, and self-care behaviors in patients with hypertension.  Methods & Materials: The study has a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test, post-test, follow-up, and a control group. The study population was all people with hypertension referred to medical centers in Kish Island, Iran, in 2010 (March to June). The research sample consisted of 32 qualified candidates who were selected using the purposive sampling method. Then they were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Perceived stress, emotional and cognitive regulation, and self-care questionnaires of patients with hypertension were used to collect information in the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up stages. The experimental group underwent mindfulness-based group therapy, but the control group did not receive any intervention. The obtained data were analyzed with repeated measures analysis of variance in SPSS v. 22. The significance level of the tests was considered 0.05. Findings: The results showed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the mean scores of positive stress (P=0.001), negative stress (P=0.001), positive emotion (P=0.001), negative emotion (P=0.001), medication regimen (P=0.003), diet (P=0.011), and disease management (P=0.026) in the post-test and follow-up. But there was no significant difference between the mean scores of food labels (P=0.195). Conclusion: The effectiveness of mindfulness-based group therapy on reducing stress and negative emotion and improving self-care of patients with hypertension suggests that in addition to the physical components of chronic diseases, the psychological components of patients be considered to prevent recurrence diseases and increase adherence to treatment in them.