Hypertension and Its Impact on the Family Unit
This paper provides a comprehensive overview of hypertension (high blood pressure), examining its clinical definition, known causes, incidence patterns, and global prevalence statistics. It explores how the disorder affects not only the individual but also the family unit, particularly through elevated household stress that can worsen symptoms. The paper discusses adaptive coping strategies families can adopt to manage stress, and outlines key nursing interventions for hypertensive crises and discharge planning. Drawing on clinical and public health literature, the paper underscores hypertension's growing prevalence across demographic groups and the importance of lifestyle modification, medication adherence, and family-level support in managing the condition.
- Defining Hypertension and Blood Pressure: Clinical definition, causes, and blood pressure physiology
- Incidence, Demographics, and Outcome Criteria: Who is affected and how pressure is measured
- Prevalence, Statistics, and Current Treatments: Global statistics and pharmacological treatment options
- Impact of Hypertension on the Family: Stress, family dynamics, and hypertension risk
- Adapting and Coping Within the Family Unit: Stress management strategies for affected families
- Nursing Interventions for Hypertension: Crisis care, discharge planning, and nurse responsibilities
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What makes this paper effective
- Clearly defines clinical terminology before applying it, making the paper accessible to both general and professional audiences.
- Moves logically from biomedical definition through epidemiology to family and nursing contexts, keeping the scope coherent throughout.
- Grounds each claim in peer-reviewed citations, lending credibility to both the clinical and psychosocial sections.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective synthesis of clinical and psychosocial literature. Rather than treating hypertension purely as a medical condition, it bridges biomedical data (e.g., blood pressure thresholds, pharmacological treatments) with family-level and nursing perspectives, showing how a chronic illness creates ripple effects beyond the individual patient.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into six clearly labeled sections. It opens with a clinical definition and physiological explanation of blood pressure, then moves to incidence patterns and outcome criteria, followed by global prevalence data and current drug therapies. The second half shifts focus to the family context — examining stress as a mediating factor — before addressing coping strategies and, finally, specific nursing interventions including hypertensive crisis management and discharge planning.
Defining Hypertension and Blood Pressure
Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, is a common and often asymptomatic disorder — that is, one displaying no physical symptoms — characterized by an elevated blood pressure that persistently exceeds 140/90 mm Hg. Essential hypertension, the most frequent type, has no single identifiable cause, but the risk of the disorder is greatly increased by obesity, a high sodium level in the blood serum, hypercholesterolemia, and a family history of high blood pressure, indicating that hypertension may be an inherited disorder (Lhotta, K., Janecke, A.R., 2009, p. 1356).
Blood pressure (BP) can be defined as the pressure exerted by the circulating volume of blood on the walls of the arteries, veins, and chambers of the heart. Overall blood pressure is maintained "by the complex interaction of the homeostatic mechanisms of the body, moderated by the volume of the blood, the lumen of the arteries and the force of cardiac contractions" (Trudel, X., 2009, p. 1565). The pressure in the aorta and large arteries of a healthy adult male is approximately 120 mm Hg during systole and 70 mm Hg during diastole, with a pulse pressure of about 50 mm Hg.
Some known causes of hypertension include adrenal disorders such as aldosteronism, "a condition characterized by hypersecretion of aldosterone of the adrenal cortex" (Chummun, H., 2009, p. 785); Cushing's Syndrome, "a metabolic disorder resulting from the chronic production of cortisol by the adrenal cortex" (Chummun, H., 2009, p. 785); pheochromocytoma, "a vascular tumor of chromaffin tissue of the adrenal medulla" (Masterson, K.L., 2007, p. 350); and other related disorders associated with the kidneys.
Incidence, Demographics, and Outcome Criteria
The incidence of hypertension is higher in males than in females and is twice as great in African Americans and Hispanics as compared to whites. Persons with mild or moderate hypertension may be asymptomatic or may experience suboccipital headaches — especially upon waking — as well as tinnitus, light-headedness, and palpitations. Since hypertension has become so prevalent in the United States over the last two decades, the disorder has begun to appear in young adults, teenagers, and even children, due in part to being overweight or obese, following a poor diet, and engaging in insufficient physical activity (Schoenthaler, A., Ravenell, J., 2007, p. 395).
As A.L. Baggish and R.B. Weiner (2009) point out, any factor that increases peripheral resistance or cardiac output affects blood pressure. Strong emotion, for example, tends to do both; thus, "it is important to try to secure a blood pressure reading when the person is at rest" (p. 104). Increased peripheral resistance generally raises diastolic pressure (the bottom number), while increased cardiac output tends to raise systolic pressure (the top number). Blood pressure also increases with age as a result of decreasing distensibility of the veins and arteries. As a person grows older, "an increase in systolic pressure often precedes an increase in diastolic pressure" (Baggish, A.L., Weiner, R.B., 2009, p. 105).
Prevalence, Statistics, and Current Treatments
According to M. Humbert and R. Saggan (2009), hypertension is currently one of the leading causes of heart disease and cardiovascular failure, not only in the United States but also globally (p. 368). Before 1980, a number of clinical studies demonstrated that hypertension within the U.S. population was declining, but by the early 1990s it was shown to be increasing again, especially among males between the ages of 30 and 50.
In 2000, one important clinical trial found that almost 30% of the male population in the United States was suffering from hypertension (Schoenthaler, A., Ravenell, J., 2007, p. 395). A separate study conducted by the World Health Organization showed that hypertension was increasing in other nations as well, including Japan and China, where diets differ considerably from those in the United States. Overall, incidence rates vary widely and are dependent upon sex and gender, ethnicity, age, and whether the affected individual is overweight or obese (Schoenthaler, A., Ravenell, J., 2007, p. 396).
Drugs currently used to treat hypertension include diuretics such as furosemide and thiazide derivatives, vasodilators such as hydralazine and prazosin, sympathetic nervous system depressants and inhibitors, and a number of ganglionic blocking agents. Alongside these medications, the affected person is almost always advised to follow a low-sodium, low-saturated-fat diet, quit smoking, and adhere to a regular exercise regimen that also helps reduce stress levels (Wright, J.M., 2009, p. 1474).
References
Appel, L.J. (2009). Another major role for dietary sodium reduction: Improving blood pressure control in patients with resistant hypertension. Hypertension, 54(3), 444–446.
Baggish, A.L., Weiner, R.B., et al. (2009). Impact of family hypertension history on exercise-induced cardiac remodeling. American Journal of Cardiology, 104(1), 101–106.
Chummun, H. (2009). Hypertension: A contemporary approach to nursing care. British Journal of Nursing, 18(13), 784–789.
Forman, J.P., Stampfer, M.J., et al. (2008). Diet and lifestyle risk factors associated with incident hypertension in women. Journal of the American Medical Association, 302(4), 401–411.
Humbert, M., Saggan, R., et al. (2009). Pulmonary hypertension. Seminars in Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, (4), 367–369.
Lhotta, K., Janecke, A.R., et al. (2009). A large family with a gain-of-function mutation predisposing to atypical hypertension. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, (8), 1356–1362.
Masterson, K.L., et al. (2007). Hypertension and its effects on the family. Journal of the American Health Organization, (45), 345–356.
Schoenthaler, A., Ravenell, J., et al. (2007). Lifestyle changes and blood pressure control: A community-based cross-sectional survey. Journal of Clinical Hypertension, 11(7), 391–399.
Trudel, X., et al. (2009). Masked hypertension: Difficult blood pressure measurement methodology and risk factors in a working population. Journal of Hypertension, (8), 1560–1567.
Wright, J.M., et al. (2009). First-line drugs for hypertension. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (3), 1469–1475.
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