Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Cardiovascular reactivity in male veterans with coronary heart disease (CHD): An examination of the Type A behavioral pattern and hostility
Abstract
This study assessed the Type-A behavioral pattern (TABP) and one of its components: hostility (CMHo), and anger (MAI) in male veterans with known coronary heart disease (CHD), and cardiovascular reactivity (CVR). CVR was defined as a change from baseline in a psychophysiologic response ((heart rate (HR), Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) and Dystolic Blood Pressure (DBP)) upon presentation of a series of cognitive-behavioral challenges (mental arithmetic, video game, film, story telling). These challenges were presented in two conditions, demand or non-demand. This assessment of psychosocial variables and physiologic arousal provided information regarding the relationship between psychosocial variables (TABP, CMHo and MAI) and CVR in males with CHD, the effects that various cognitive-behavioral challenges have on CVR in older males with CHD, and the effect that instructional demands have on CVR. These data further articulate the degree to which CVR is present in older males with CHD and expands the involvement of the psychosocial factors involved in psychophysiologic reactivity. The results indicate that hostility (CMHo), had the greatest absolute association with CVR. However, the direction of this CMHo-CVR association was challenge specific. Challenges requiring verbalization produced an inverse CMHo-CVR association. By contrast, TABP was directly related to CVRF upon all challenges, except during the mental arithmetic challenge. CMHo was not significantly correlated with TABP, however, nor were the two CMHo subscales (cynicism, paranoid alienation). Instructional demands did not play a significant role in increased CVR across the four challenges, nor did hostility interact with instructional demand to increase CVR. Additionally, seventeen percent of the subjects produced exaggerated blood pressure elevations above 150 mmHg SBP and 100mmHg DBP. These data were unexpected and of clinical significance. This study supported the relationship between psychosocial factors and CVR in order males with CHD. These data expand the TABP-CVR relationship to include hostility as an important psychosocial factor related to CVR in older CHD patients.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy|Health
Recommended Citation
Loos, Warren Ross, "Cardiovascular reactivity in male veterans with coronary heart disease (CHD): An examination of the Type A behavioral pattern and hostility" (1988). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8824942.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8824942