THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTH ANXIETY, SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND COGNITIVE EMOTION REGULATION WITH THE MOTIVATION TO CHANGE THE BEHAVIOR OF PATIENTS WITH CORONARY HEART DISEASE IN URMIA CITY, IRAN

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between health anxiety, social support, cognitive emotion regulation strategies (or cognitive adaptive strategies), and the health behavior motivation of coronary heart patients in Urmia City.

This research was a descriptive correlational study. The study population included all coronary heart patients in Seyyed al-Shohada University Hospital in Urmia City. Three hundred thirteen patients were selected using the convenience sampling method. The data gathering instrument consisted of the Health Behavior Motivation Scale (HBMS) (Williams et al., 2005), the Health Anxiety Inventory (Salkoskis et al., 2002), the Social Support Scale (Sherburn and Stewart, 1991), and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski and Kraij, 2006). The data were analyzed using simultaneous regression model.

The results showed that health anxiety and nonadaptive strategy had a significant negative relationship with patient motivation for changing behavior, while social support and adaptive strategy had a significant positive relationship with patient motivation for changing the behavior (P<0.01). Furthermore, the results of simultaneous regression analysis indicated that the adaptive strategies with a beta coefficient β=0.41 have the highest ability to predict patient motivation for changing the behavior.

Based on the results of this study, health anxiety, social support, and cognitive emotion regulation have a significant relationship with the motivation to change the behavior of coronary heart and vascular patients. Thus, physicians, specialists, and therapists can use this study's findings to accelerate their patients' recovery.