ESSENTIAL HYPERTENSION AND ANXIETY, DEPRESSION AND ANGER.
Item
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Title
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ESSENTIAL HYPERTENSION AND ANXIETY, DEPRESSION AND ANGER.
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Identifier
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AAI8112369
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identifier
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8112369
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Creator
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OLAOYE, ELAINE HENRY.
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Contributor
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Prof. Samuel Messick
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Date
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1981
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Psychobiology
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Abstract
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This study investigated the possibility that essential hypertensives experience higher levels of anxiety, depression and anger than normotensives. Because of the controversy surrounding the role of subjective distress, the physiological literature focused on how subjective distress is mediated was reviewed. Enough physiological evidence was found to lend support to the hypothesis that hypertensives could be experiencing higher levels of subjective distress. However, despite the fact that a similar position had been taken in the psychosomatic literature, empirical investigations failed to identify significant differences between hypertensives and normotensives. Examination of the scales used in these studies suggested that they were not clearly focused on the variables relevant to the hypertensive personality; thus in order to advance work in this area a new instrument was required and the Subjective Emotional Stress Inventory (SESI) was developed.;The SESI consisted of three scales, an Anxiety scale, a Depression scale and an Anger scale. The scales incorporated several new features, perhaps the most important of which was the degree of specificity: items were clearly focused on persons or events most likely to be perceived as triggers and/or targets of the three emotions; as a result items examined feelings associated with parents, spouses, bosses, etc. In addition, in order to measure frequency of these feelings more accurately, response alternatives had to move beyond the vague 'Always' 'Often' 'Sometimes' etc. Response alternatives took the form of 'Several times a Day,' 'Every Day,' 'Every other Day,' etc.;Validation statistics were computed on the three scales. Alphas of internal consistency were .82, .70, .85 for the Depression, Anxiety and Anger scales respectively, based on a sample of 101 subjects. Evidence of the scales' sensitivity to subjective distress came from discriminations made between working and non-working college students, college students living and not living with their parents and smoking and non-smoking college students. T-test statistics showed that college students who were not working, college students who lived with parents and college students who did not smoke reported higher levels of subjective distress.;The research sample consisted of 108 subjects of whom 71 were over 26 years and 37 were under 23 years, with just over one-third of each age group being hypertensive or labile respectively. The research design called for seated bilateral blood pressures and heart rates to be taken before, during and after two self-administered questionnaires, the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview (PERI) and the SESI.;Data analysis consisted of ANOVAs which controlled for age, with covariance on possible confounding variables, sex, ethnicity and weight. The results revealed significant differences between hypertensives and normotensives on each of the three scales of the SESI, Anxiety, Anger and Depression. Of the Eight hypotheses associated with the SESI five were supported, indicating that in this sample, hypertensives tended to experience all three types of subjective emotional distress more frequently than normotensives.;No significant differences obtained on the PERI between hypertensives and normotensives, but there were significant differences based on age and ethnicity. The implications of these results for this area of research are discussed.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
