Abstract
Background
Psychosocial/emotional distress has been repeatedly found to be a correlate of the onset/aggravation of ischaemic heart disease.
Methods
Eighty-three patients (63 men and 20 women) with known coronary artery disease who entered an aggressive lifestyle modification programme were administered a clinical/demographic history and the Symptom Checklist 90 – Revised at baseline. Several measures of social isolation/alienation (shyness/self-consciousness, feeling lonely, feeling abused and overall) were derived from the the Symptom Checklist 90 – Revised.
Results
Univariate tests of the association of known cardiovascular risk factors and the Symptom Checklist 90 -Revised scales with age at initial diagnosis yielded several significant results for history of hypercholesterolaemia (P = 0.018), history of hypertension (P = 0.030), somatization (P = 0.007), obsessive-compulsive (P = 0.009), depression (P = 0.006), anxiety (P = 0.021), hostility (P = 0.003), paranoia (P = 0.050), psychoticism (P = 0.029), the Global Severity Index (P = 0.007), the Positive Symptom Distress Index (P = 0.005), the Positive Symptom Total Score (P = 0.003) and feeling abused (P = 0.037). Only history of hypertension, history of hypercholesterolaemia and the hostility scale (overall F= 6.08 and P = 0.0009) emerged as unique correlates of age at initial diagnosis in a multiple regression using only the significant univariate predictors.
Conclusions
Psychosocial factors are sufficiently confounded with one another that they lose their predictive value once one is entered in the equation. High scores on the hostility scale were associated with a 5.7 year differential in age at initial diagnosis. The younger a patient is at initial diagnosis, the more likely he/she is to have high levels of emotional distress.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.