Manage Depression: Protect Your Heart

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By Leslie Pepper

Did you know that depression is as big a heart attack risk as high blood pressure or high cholesterol? If you or someone you know is depressed, here's what you need to know to ease depression symptoms and also reduce your risk of heart disease.

Doctors didn't used to spend much time thinking about a connection between how a person feels and his or her chances of developing heart disease. That has changed. "It's now clear that depression marks an individual at much higher risk than someone who is not depressed," says Richard A. Stein, M.D., author of Outliving Heart Disease: The 10 New Rules for Prevention and Treatment (Newmarket, 2008).

In fact, depression is as important a risk factor as high cholesterol, hypertension, and even the ability of the heart to pump blood throughout the body.

A recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that patients with heart disease who had depression were 50 percent more likely to die or be hospitalized for their heart condition than patients who weren't depressed. The study, conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the University of North Carolina, included 204 heart failure patients who were followed for an average of three years.

Why does depression have such a big impact on the heart?