Hopelessness can lead to hypertension in middle-aged men, a new study says. Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor define hopelessness as a sense of futility and negative expectations.
Their study, which appears in the February Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association, focused on 616 middle-aged men from eastern Finland. Researchers say after four years, 37 percent of the men considered "high in hopelessness" developed hypertension. By contrast, 23 percent of those with "moderate" hopelessness and 17 percent of those with little or no hopelessness suffered from hypertension.
Hopelessness also is a symptom of depression. But the study's authors wrote that hopelessness is more likely to result in "adverse cardiovascular consequences" than depression.
They say more testing is needed on whether hopelessness is the critical feature of depression that raises cardiovascular risk.
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