Abstract

INTRODUCTION Hypertension is a chronic disease, which represents one of the most common public health problems in the world and afflicts about 28% of the North Americans, 44% of the Europeans and 26% of the East Mediterranean people aged 35 to 64 years. In Iran, about 11.5% of the people who are over 15 years old are afflicted. Hypertension is the most prevalent cardiovascular disease; it is the leading cause of stroke, heart attack, kidney disease and aortic aneurysm. MATERIALS AND METHODS This is a cross-sectional study, carried out on 200 patients who were referred to the Health centers of Yazd city in center of Iran. We adapted tools from previous studies. All patients were asked to express their personal goals with respect to their hypertension values. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire were determined and their Alfa cronbach was (a=0.83). RESULTS The mean number of years with hypertension was 8.7[+/-]7.6. Men and women showed moderately high means for attitudes, subjective norms, and positive anticipated emotions toward trying to reduce or maintain their blood pressure. The data indicated there is significantly different between the personnel and housewives, with p<0.001. In addition, the personnel's mean grade scores for trying the self-regulation of their blood pressure was (15.9[+/-]4.08) and, in the housewives was (12.49[+/-]4.33). CONCLUSION The results of this study showed that the Model of Goal Behavior can explain more than 52% of the self-regulation of hypertension, so, this Model can be a basic Model for intervention in education, in order to decrease and control hypertension in patients.