intervention of collective exercise on the mental health of el¬derly hypertensive patients

background: anxiety, depression, and other adverse psychological reactions are often observed in elderly hypertensive patients. appropriate exercise is a safe form of adjuvant therapy without causing side effects among these patients, with consistent effects on patients’ mental health. in this study, a collective exercise intervention experiment was conducted to evaluate the mental health of elderly hypertensive patients and to verify the effect of the psychological intervention of collective exercise. method: a total of 115 elderly hypertensive patients aged 60–70 years old were selected as study subjects from may 2012 to january 2015 in fuzhou city, fujian province, china. a total of 57 patients were included in the control group and 58 patients were assigned in the experimental group. patients in the experimental group participated in a 12 weeks exercise intervention, while patients in the control group didn’t participate in any regular physical exercise. results: after intervention, the symptom checklist-90 (scl-90), total score, somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptom, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, and paranoia scores of the experimental group were significantly lower than those of the control group ( p < 0.05). the positive coping style score of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group ( p <0.05); by contrast, the negative coping style score of the experimental group was significantly lower than that of the control group ( p < 0.05). conclusion: the mental health level and coping ability of elderly hypertensive patients can be effectively improved with the proposed treatment.