Comparison of Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Motivational Interviewing on Decreasing Anxiety, Depression, Stress and Increasing Hope in Essential Hypertensive Patients

Essential Hypertension (EH) is general health problem which is prevalent around worldwide. Based on previous studies, Essential Hypertension is significant risk factor for Chronic Diseases. The main purpose of this study was to compare acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) motivational interviewing (MI) on anxiety, depression, stress and hope in essential hypertensive patients.
This study was a semi-experimental study with pretest, post-test and follow-up. Subjects were first screened by using inclusion and exclusion criteria, therefore 39 hypertensive patients were selected who referred to Valiasr Hospital in Rasht city and randomly were divided into experimental and control groups (13 patients in each group). The motivational interviewing (MI) group was treated in 5 sessions and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) group was treated in 8 sessions while the control group did not receive any treatment. Research’s tools were stress, anxiety and depression and hope scale that in all three phases were completed by subjects.
The data was analyzed by MANCOVA and POST HOC statistical tests showed that ACT and MI, mean of depression, anxiety and stress was significantly lower than control group and also had higher hope. It was also found that ACT, was significantly lower in mean of anxiety and stress than MI group and higher in hope.
Based on research’s findings, ACT and MI are effective interventions in essential hypertensive patients.