The nearest neighbor dependence of the pressure induced polymorphic phase transitions of mercury chalcogenides have been analyzed. An ionic and a metallic model were used to compute the lattice energies of both low and high pressure phases and the transition pressures of the HgSexTe1−x alloys. It was found that, contrary to the alkali halides, the transition pressure increases experimentally as well as indicated by theoretical calculations with increasing nearest neighbor distance. This is interpreted with the different behavior of the nearest neighbor distances related to the phase transitions. In the case of the alkali halides, although the dimensions of the unit cell decrease in going from the low to the high pressure phase, the nearest neighbor distances increase. However, in the case of the mercury chalcogenides, the trend concerning the unit cell is the same as in the case of the alkali halides, nevertheless the nearest neighbor distances decrease as a result of the pressure induced phase transition. This might clarify the inverse trend of the transition pressure as a function of the sizes of the anion sublattices, elicited by the nearest neighbor distances, in the case of mercury chalcogenides.