Mebratu Aberha, Abebaw Gebeyehu and Getinet Ayano
Background: Anxiety disorders are common among people living hypertension. The co-existence of these disorders are associated with barriers to treatment and worsening medical outcomes, including treatment resistance, increased risk for suicide, greater chance for recurrence and utilization of medical resources and/or increase morbidity and mortality. Therefore, assessing depression and anxiety among hypertensive patients has a pivotal role for further interventions.
Methods: Institution based cross sectional study was used by face to face interview using standardized questioner, Amharic Version of Hospital Anxiety & Depression Scale (HADS), which has scores for classifying the participants having anxiety symptoms, was applied in systematic random sampling of 417 adult participants. Data entry was performed by using EPI info 3.5.3 and SPPSS version 20. Binary logistic regression analysis (multivariate analysis) was used to identify associated factors.
Result: The study revealed that the prevalence of anxiety was 28.5%. Stressful life events (AOR 1.69, 95%CI (1.03, 2.79), being female (AOR 2.57, 95% CI (1.42, 4.56), co-morbid diabetes illness (AOR 2.98, 95%CI (1.61, 5.53), unable to read and write (AOR 2.72, 95% CI (1.33, 5.58) and poor social support (AOR 6.98, 95% CI (3.48, 13.96) had statistically significant association with anxiety with p-value <0.05.
Conclusion and Recommendation: Prevalence of anxiety was high. Co-morbid diabetes mellitus, low social support, being female sex, having stressful life events and unable to read and write educational status were associated with anxiety. Clinicians who provide service for patients with hypertension should focus on patients who have co-morbid of other illness such as, diabetes mellitus, and who have stressful life events in the last six months to assess the presence of anxiety. In additions ministry of health should give training on how to screen anxiety hypertensive patients and should develop guidelines to screen and treat among hypertensive patients.