Blood pressure causes neurotic personality traits

According to a study, neurotic personality traits are most likely to be caused by diastolic blood pressure, which is the lower of the two numbers in a blood pressure reading.

The findings were published in the journal General Psychiatry. And keeping it under control can help curb neurotic behaviours, anxiety, and heart and circulatory diseases, researchers concluded.

High blood pressure is a major risk for cardiovascular disease and is thought to be associated with psychological factors, such as anxiety, depression, and neuroticism--a personality trait characterised by susceptibility to negative emotions, including anxiety and depression.

In a bid to find out, the researchers used a technique called Mendelian randomisation. This uses genetic variants as proxies for a particular risk factor to obtain genetic evidence in support of a causal relationship, reducing the biases inherent in observational studies.