Category: Heart disease and mental health issues

– posts here focus on the often overlooked emotional impact of having a cardiac event

Why hearing the diagnosis can hurt worse than the heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters


Researchers in the U.K. have found that heart attack survivors have a disturbingly high incidence of undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Terrifying symptoms, invasive procedures, and a life-altering diagnosis of heart disease can inflict profound psychological stress.

But interestingly – no matter the body part involved – it’s the part about hearing the diagnosis that may actually be the most traumatic for us, regardless of the severity of our required medical intervention. Continue reading “Why hearing the diagnosis can hurt worse than the heart attack” →

Four ingredients in the heart patient’s recipe for stress

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

While what stresses you is different from what stresses your neighbour, the recipe for stress is universal. So are the four ingredients in this recipe, according to the Centre for Studies on Human Stress at the University of Montréal.

This Centre, by the way, is a remarkably helpful resource if you’re one of those people who have become so chronically stressed day to day that you no longer think this state of being is even abnormal anymore.

Your body’s natural response to psychological stressors – the release of stress hormones – can lead to poor health outcomes if it becomes chronic.

It struck me that the Centre’s list of four ingredients that reliably elicit this stress response are also those that make a heart disease diagnosis itself so continually stressful.  They include:   Continue reading “Four ingredients in the heart patient’s recipe for stress” →

When grief morphs into depression: five tips for coping with heart disease

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Dr. Elvira Aletta is a clinical psychologist with a unique perspective on what it’s like to live with a chronic illness. In her early twenties, she was diagnosed with nephrotic syndrome, a rare kidney disease that usually affects young boys. Then in her thirties, she came down with a chronic autoimmune condition called scleroderma.

She’d never heard of that, either. She describes her experience like this:

“Chronic illness means getting sick and being told it is not going away, and that stinks. Our bodies have suddenly freaked out on us, and we’ve lost control of the one thing we thought we could count on.”

These sentiments might also seem familiar to those of us living with cardiovascular disease. And that can feel downright depressing. See also: When are cardiologists going to start talking about depression?

Continue reading “When grief morphs into depression: five tips for coping with heart disease” →

How we adapt after a heart attack may depend on what we believe this diagnosis means

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

There are at least 12 commonly used measurement tools available to the medical profession that look at how patients navigate “the search for meaning in chronic illness”. Clinical tools like the Psychosocial Adjustment To Illness Inventory or the Meaning of Illness Questionnaire have been used on cancer and AIDS patients, as well as others living with chronic disease. But research, including this study, found that limiting factors in the success of these 12 tools included “the infrequent use of some of the instruments clinically or in research.”

I can’t help but wonder why these readily available assessment tools are not being administered routinely to patients who have been freshly diagnosed with heart disease – a serious medical crisis that begs to be examined for its influence on our “psychosocial adjustment” to it. I only learned about these tools two years after my own heart attack.

This lack of medical attention to the profound psychological impact of a cardiac event is disturbing. As Dr. Gilles Dupuis of the Université du Québec and the Montréal Heart Institute reported in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, post-traumatic stress disorder following heart attack is a largely under-diagnosed and unrecognized phenomenon that can actually put survivors at risk of another attack. Continue reading “How we adapt after a heart attack may depend on what we believe this diagnosis means” →