Exploring effects of therapeutic massage and patient teaching in the practice of diaphragmatic breathing on blood pressure, stress, and anxiety in hypertensive African-American women: an intervention study.

The problem of hypertension among African-Americans is one of the major areas of health disparities. The American Heart Association (2009) noted that the prevalence of hypertension among African-Americans is perhaps among the highest in the world and this is particularly so among African-American women (44.0%). The purpose of this study was to determine how therapeutic chair massage and patient teaching in diaphragmatic breathing affected African-American women's blood pressure, stress, and anxiety levels over one week or six weeks time periods. A Modified Stress, Coping, and Adaptation Model (Roy, 1976; Lazarus, 1966), Descriptives, T-tests, Pearson Product Moment Correlations, Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and Multivariate analysis of variance with covariate (MANCOVA) were used. Descriptive statistics indicated a significance for decreased systolic blood pressure levels for the one week post massage intervention measurement with p = .01, diastolic blood pressure level significance for the same group p = .02, significance for this group's State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) Y2 Scale score p = .01, and Roy's Largest Root p = .03.