Blood Pressure, Ghettos Linked

Blood Pressure, Ghettos Linked

DETROIT (AP) — A three-year study of Detroit ghettos indicates that high blood pressure and early death are prevalent among blacks who live in the “high stress” areas.

Findings of the study were reported Friday by Ernest Harburg, a University of Michigan social psychologist. The research was a joint study by the U-M and Wayne State University.

Harburg suggested that the key to the greater rate of high blood pressure among poor blacks may be the suppressed anger and guilt that have characterized the urban black’s response to white discrimination.

The study is one of the first to offer evidence that environment rather than heredity may play a major role in the fact that more American blacks suffer from hypertension than whites.

Four Detroit neighborhoods were studied, including the “high stress” 12th Street area, where the 1967 riot began. Other areas included a black “low stress” neighborhood, and low stress and high stress white areas.

Researchers interviewed and checked the blood pressure of 250 married couples in each neighborhood.

The study showed that in “high stress” black areas, 17 per cent of the men and women—nearly one in five—had blood pressure levels on or above the border-line level for hypertension.

In the low stress black neighborhood, only six per cent of the men and 10 per cent of the women had blood pressure levels that were borderline or above.

In the white neighborhoods, nine per cent of the men had abnormally high blood pressure. Among white women, eight per cent of those in high stress neighborhoods had high blood pressure. Four per cent had such problems in low stress areas.

The findings were reported at a meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association.