Abstract:

Objective: Focusing on metacognitive processes, this study aims to compare metacognitive beliefs, cognitive attention syndrome, and anxiety symptoms between hypertension patients and healthy control group. Materials and Methods: The sample of the present study, which was designed as a case-control study, consists of 128 consecutive patients with essential hypertension who applied to the cardiology outpatient clinic and 231 healthy controls. Sociodemographic data form, Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Metacognition Questionnaire 30 (MCQ-30), and Cognitive Attentional Syndrome-1 Questionnaire (CAS-1) were applied to the volunteers included in the study. The obtained data were duly calculated and subjected to statistical processing. Results: The mean age of the participants included in the study was 51.81±8.07 years, and 75.5% (n=271) were female. No statistical difference was found between the two study groups in the comparison of sociodemographic data (p>0.05). A statistically significant difference was found in BAI (t=-3.700, p<0.001), MCQ-30 Uncontrollability and danger (t=-3.587, p<0.001), need to control thoughts (t=-2.233, p=0.020), CAS-1 cognitive attention (t=-3.543, p<0.001), belief (t=-2.454, p=0.015) and total (t=-3.364, p<0.001) scores between essential hypertension and the healthy control group. Conclusion: The present study revealed that patients with essential hypertension have higher activation of anxiety and metacognition. We think that these results are important because they reveal the relationship between metacognitive processes and physical problems. However, it can be thought that the results of our study will shed light on the therapeutic interventions to be planned for essential hypertension patients.