Dušan Selko
The importance of personality and psychosocial influence is generally accepted in multifactor aetiopathogenesis of essential hypertension (EH) but in practical management these factors are underestimated neglected. Orientation of physicians in EH diagnostics is mostly biological. Strategy of optimal EH therapy is difficult, psychological terminology is practically not often easy to understand and even more difficult to be realized. Last guidelines for management of essential hypertension speak volumes for these claims. Behavioural sciences try to present the complex and systemic view of factors participating in the outbreak of a disease as well as in the therapy. Psychosomatically oriented researchers enriched by knowledge of influence of behaviour and life style on the health, of stress and individual differences in response to load enlarged the original concept of s.c. hypertensive personality by salutogenetic model and concept of psychosocial determinants of the health. Socio-economic conditions, unemployment, family status, social net, loneliness and social isolation as well as other socio-environmental impacts significantly affect health conditions of population, mostly regarding chronic diseases. The aim of the article is not to make the difficult life of clinicians more difficult but to help them to understand the relation health – personality – behaviour – environment – disease and to motivate them to cooperate and treat this high risk group of patients even more effectively.