A comparative analysis of the psychological structure of perfectionism in patients with hypertension at work and patients with essential hyperten sion

Resum

The main concern of our study was to conduct a comparative analysis of perfectionism indices showed by patients with ‘hypertension at work’against the indices of healthy people and patients with essential hypertension. We also aimed at establishment of correlation between perfectionism indices and intensity of the emotional burnout syndrome (EBS) for the same groups of participants. We tested 85 patients with hypertension at work, 85 patients with essential hypertension and 82 healthy people, equable in sex and age. We succeeded to show that patients with essential HPT, and particularly hypertension at work, differ from healthy people by stronger manifestation of perfectionism as a personality characteristic. Its structure for both groups of patients reveals an exaggerated factor of ‘socially prescribed perfectionism’, while healthy people would accentuate the factor of ‘overly raised self aspirations and claims’. The structure of perfectionism for patients with hypertension at work has a remarkably disharmonious character as compared with the one of healthy people or patients with essential hypertension: ‘socially prescribed perfectionism’ index considerably outscores other parameters. We also succeeded to establish a correlation between the indices of perfectionism and intensity of EBS for all groups of participants. ‘Socially prescribed perfectionism’appears to be closely related to EBS parameters in the two subgroups of HTN patients, though patients with HTN at work reveal higher indices of correlation, if compared with essential HTN. The factor of ‘polarized thinking’ has no actual correlation with the parameters of the emotional burnout syndrome.