Depression can double chances of heart ailments

Linking matters of the mind with matters of the heart, researchers in Canada have found that major anxiety and depression can double a coronary artery disease patient's chances of repeated heart ailments.
"We found that both major depression and generalised anxiety disorder were more common in cardiac patients than in the general community," said Nancy Frasure-Smith, the lead investigator of the study by McGill University and Universit de Montral.
"On average, cardiac patients without these disorders had about a 13 percent chance of a repeated cardiac event over two years, compared to 26 percent of those with either major depression or anxiety," said Frasure-Smith, a professor at McGill's Department of Psychiatry and a researcher at the Centre hospitalier de l'Universit de Montral (CHUM) and Montreal Heart Institute.
The study found that major anxiety and depression can double a coronary artery disease patient's chances of repeated heart ailments, the ScienceDaily online reported.
This is one of the first studies to focus on patients with stable coronary artery disease -- not those who were hospitalised for events such as a heart attack.