Life events and hypertension--a negative finding.

Thirty black Xhosa-speaking unskilled workers, aged between 28 and 59 years, completed three questionnaire measures of stress: Bluen and Odesnik's Township Life Events Scale, Weiman's Occupational Stress Scale and Melamed's Emotional Reactivity Scale. Other variables measured were age, systolic and diastolic blood pressure and body mass index (BMI). Stress levels on all the measures were particularly high in comparison with other groups studied with the same instruments. The well-known relationship between body mass and blood pressure was replicated. However, there was no correlation between blood pressure and any of the stress measures, even when variance in respect of age and body mass was partialled out. It is concluded that the pathways linking stressors to high blood pressure are complex and that caution must be exercised in claiming that there is a link between high levels of urban stress and high incidence of hypertension.