Intervention of Collective Exercise on the Mental Health of El¬derly Hypertensive Patients

Anxiety, depression, and other adverse psychological reactions are often observed in elderly hypertensive patients. Appropriate exercise is a safe form of adjuvant therapy without causing side effects among these patients, with consistent effects on patients’ mental health. In this study, a collective exercise intervention experiment was conducted to evaluate the mental health of elderly hypertensive patients and to verify the effect of the psychological intervention of collective exercise.
A total of 115 elderly hypertensive patients aged 60–70 years old were selected as study subjects from May 2012 to January 2015 in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China. A total of 57 patients were included in the control group and 58 patients were assigned in the experimental group. Patients in the experimental group participated in a 12 weeks exercise intervention, while patients in the control group didn’t participate in any regular physical exercise.
After intervention, the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90), total score, somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptom, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, and paranoia scores of the experimental group were significantly lower than those of the control group (P The mental health level and coping ability of elderly hypertensive patients can be effectively improved with the proposed treatment.