The aim of this study is to understand the way life of hypertensive patients under the care of a Family Healthcare Program, regarding the theoretical-methodological historical and dialectical materialism. Eleven interviews were held with these patients, based on analysis of the speech procedures, which showed themes related to daily life social reality. The six empirical categories identified - beliefs, feelings, beyond-individual, under-control pressure, out-of-control pressure and hypertension causes - were analyzed according to two dialectical categories - the subjective and the objective - and the health-ill-ness-care process. Daily life has revealed contradictions related to the needed treatment and the illness not assumed as it is; need for changes of habits and human values which oppose to these changes; the impossibility of pressure levels control due to way of life conditions, such as nervousness and familiar problems. Nursing needs to change its way of caring about patients falling chronically ill.
Hypertension; Health behavior; Nursing; Adult health