Essential hypertension (EH) is one of the most common diseases of the cardiovascular system. Today, scientists discover more and more patients whose BP values during work appear to be higher than those values during free time. This form of EH is called “hypertension at work”.

To study the role emotion dysregulation in the pathogenesis of EH.

A projective study of emotion regulation was undertaken with our modified version of Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Test (Zinchernko, Pervichko). At the second stage of the study, the simulation of emotional stress with the aspiration level modelling was carried out. The level of state anxiety, BP values and levels of catecholamines, renin and angiotonin I were taken before and after the experiment. Eighty-five patients with “hypertension at work” (mean age: 45.9 ± 2.8), 85 patients with “classical” EH (mean age: 47.4 ± 4.5 years) and 82 healthy subjects (mean age: 44.9 ± 3.1) took part in the study.

“Hypertension at work” patients significantly more frequently than patients from the second group and healthy subjects are more prone to rumination, disasterization and repression of their emotions. They will seldom employ the strategy of subjective-objective interactive transformations; their edibility to actualize new meanings in traumatic situations is diminished. We showed that emotion regulation strategies in “hypertension in the work” patients were ineffective in overcoming the emotional tension and created the conditions for chronization of high blood pressure, and could be considerded as the central link in pathogenesis of stress-induced hypertension.

The results contributes to enrich our understanding of etiology and pathogenesis of EH.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.