A comparative study of hypertension and coronary artery disease (CAD) patients on stress-related symptoms

Pages: 11-16
Sabiha Baby, Mohammad Akram and M. Ilyas Khan (Departments of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh)

Cardiovascular diseases caused 2.3 million deaths in 1990; this is projected to double by the year of 2020. The present attempt is a comparative study of hypertension and Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) patients on stress-related symptoms. Data consisted of 200 patients, of these there were 100 hypertensive and 100 CAD patients. Patients were drawn from OPD of the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital (JNMCH), AMU, Aligarh. Stress symptoms checklist was used to measure different types of stress namely, mental physical, emotional and social. Independent t-test was used to examine the differences between hypertensive and CAD patients on stress-related symptoms. Result indicates that, there were no significant differences between the mean scores of hypertensive and CAD disease patients on mental, physical and emotional symptoms of stress whereas significant difference was found between comparative groups on social symptoms of stress. Both the groups of patients were not differing significantly on overall stress symptoms. It was concluded that stress plays a significant role in susceptibility, progress and outcomes of cardiovascular diseases (i.e., hypertension and CAD).