Improved hypertension control after disclosure of decades-old trauma

This report presents the case of a 49-year-old woman who had been treated unsuccessfully for 6 years for longstanding severe and refractory essential hypertension. Although she reported no extraordinary stress or distress, her disclosure of a 3-decade-old rape and the experiencing of previously repressed and unconfided emotions related to it were followed by a dramatic and sustained improvement in her blood pressure. This case suggests that repressed emotions, which patients cannot report, may contribute substantially to the development of essential hypertension, even when they are related to decades-old events. More attention to repressed emotions, and better means of studying them, are needed before the mystery of the links between psychological factors and essential hypertension is unraveled.