Effect of Stress Inoculation Training on General Health of Hypertensive Patients

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of stress inoculation training on general health of hypertensive patients. Therefore, 14 female and 14 male patients were randomly selected from the Cardiovascular Center of Isfahan. These patients were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, each group comprising of 7 men and 7 women. The experimental group received 8 weekly sessions of stress inoculation training but the control group did not receive such training. It was hypothesized that stress inoculation training would increase the general health of the experimental group as compared to the control group. The GHQ-28 was administered to both groups before and after training. The results of analysis of covariance showed that stress inoculation training significantly reduced the mean total scores of the experimental group as compared to the control group (P<0.001). Also, the training significantly reduced the mean scores of the experimental group compared to the control group on somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and depression (P<0.01). It is concluded that stress inoculation training, as a useful method of intervention, could be applied to increase the general health of hypertensive patients.