The effectiveness of psychological intervention in cardiac rehabilitation. Do cognitive abilities matter?
| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas | |
Misiūnienė, Jurga | Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas |
Šinkariova, Liuda | Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas |
Zajančiauskaitė-Staskevičienė, Loreta | Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas |
Alčiauskaitė, Laura | Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas |
| Date Issued | Issue | Start Page | End Page |
|---|---|---|---|
2016 | [3] | 383 | 390 |
SGEM Conferences, ISSN 2367-5659
Background: There is evidence of relationship between individuals’ cognitive abilities and their health in scientific literature. Studies confirm that physical health influences the level of IQ. However, people who have lower IQ tend to have various illnesses, including cardiac. Less is known how cognitive abilities are connected with patients’ recovery. It is essential to change unhealthy behaviour if cardiac patients want to return to valuable life. While individuals, who have higher IQ, adapt better to new situations, it is likely they will get better results in changing their unhealthy behaviour during psychological intervention. To assess the link between cardiac patients’ cognitive abilities and variation of readiness to change their health behaviour before and after cardiac rehabilitation. Methods: A quasi experiment design was employed. Participants were separated into experimental and control groups. A written consent, demographics and ‘Readiness to Change Questionnaire’ [11] were retrieved from them. Short version of Intelligence Structure Test [2] was used to assess verbal, numerical, figurative intelligence and general reasoning as a total score. The experimental group had a regular cardiac rehabilitation program including motivational interviewing based psychological counselling, seeking to change unhealthy behaviour. The control group had regular cardiac rehabilitation. At the end of cardiac rehabilitation participants completed ‘Readiness to Change Questionnaire’ a second time. Results: 304 cardiac rehabilitation patients participated in the experiment. T-test showed no differences between the groups comparing patients’ verbal (p=.731), numerical (p=.450) and figurative intelligence (p=.498), general reasoning as a total score (p=.409). Experimental group (N=157): numerical intelligence (p=.036) was lower for those patients whose readiness to change physical activity increased after psychological intervention; [...]