For both men and women, says Prevention advisor Redford Williams, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke in Durham, NC, the latest studies link three psychosocial risk factors to a higher risk and worse prognosis for heart disease. They are hostility, social isolation, and depression. As Dr. Williams explains, men are more likely to have hostility and less likely to have social support. Women tend to have more social support and less hostility -- but they're twice as likely to experience depression. Could depression be one factor explaining why heart disease kills as many women as men? Nancy Frasure-Smith, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and nursing at Montreal University, tracked 613 men and 283 women who'd had heart attacks. "We found that people who were depressed -- men or women -- were three to four times more likely to die of cardiac causes. That makes depression as dangerous to the heart as traditional risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking.

Source:Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke in Durham, NC.

Url is www.heart-help.net
Ginger@heart-help.net
Lee@LeeJRoush@msn.com
Last Modified on Oct. 8, 2001