COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ANXIETY LEVEL , PERSONALITY TYPE AND RISK FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH HYPERTENSION IN Hypertensive and non-hypertensive

Estudio Comparativo Del Nivel De Ansiedad, Personalidad Tipo A y Factores De Riesgo Asociados a Hipertencion Arterial En Pacientes Hipertensos y No Hipertensos

Introduction: Anxiety and type A personality has been postulated as a source of a
great number of illnesses as much as from psychic as from organic order, including
hypertension, known as the hidden enemy. It is important to verify or refute, this
association between Arterial Hypertension, anxiety and type A personality, that defines
a life style that is very vulnerable to stress.
Objectives: To determine the anxiety level and de rate of vulnerability to stress, the
last one measured through type A personality or auto-stressing personality, as risk
factors for Arterial hypertension and to describe the association between modifiable
risk factors, non-modifiable risk factors and Arterial Hypertension.
Materials and methods: Non-experimental, co-relational descriptive study taking two
comparative groups: A group of hypertensive patients from a first level health institute
of Manizales City (Caldas, Colombia) (n=112) and a non-hypertensive group, chosen
by convenience (n=112) with homologation in variables such as genre, civil state,
economic level and access to social security; in both groups, hypertensive And nonhypertensive,
the dominant civil state is married, without a significant difference between
the groups. To the total of the 2 groups 3 surveys were made: hypertension risk factors,
personality type A and Zung anxiety scale; additionally other common risk factors were
studied.

Results: from the total of the population, 71.9% were women and 28.1% were men; an
economic level 3 and the condition of being married predominates. The majority of the
hypertensive population were housewife, different from the non-hypertensive population
that only a fifth of it was housewife.
It doesn’t exist an significant association between type a personality or auto-stressing
and Arterial Hypertension (p=0.855) (P=0.144), but anxiety does has an strong
association with de origin and progression of arterial hypertension. Age isn’t associated
to the anxiety level, but it is well associated to type A personality. There were no
differences found according to the genre with anxiety, but well to type A personality
(p=0.040), this auto-stressing behaviour pattern appears frequently in men , that also
tends to be associated with the kind of occupation, even thought the findings don’t
reach a significant level.
Conclusions: It must be taken into account that the hypertensive group belong to a
Club of people with Hypertension, who have weekly encounters to promote a better
care for yourself. That can explain the greater grade of physical exercise and the
minor grade of alcohol and tobacco consumption in the hypertensive population. It is
suggested for later studies to select a third comparative group, of patients that have
just begun treatment, to clarify the findings and establish the effect of the corrective
measurements of health promotion in the Clubs of people with hypertension. It is equally
suggested to take a lot into account the variables genre, age and occupation in the
moment of the homologations of these comparative groups.