Life events and myocardial infarction.

Life events reported to have occurred twelve months before the onset of the illness were compared in 55 in-patients who had a first episode of myocardial infarction and 55 control in-patients matched for age, sex, marital status and social class and afflicted with acute abdomen, trauma and multiple trauma. The Paykel interview for Recent Life Events was used. Myocardial infarction patients reported significantly more previous events than the control group (p less than 0.001) with more undesirable (p less than 0.01) and uncontrolled (p less than 0.01) events. Moreover, myocardial infarction patients had significantly more events (p less than 0.01) which had an "objective negative impact" (rated as being traumatic). These findings are consistent with the view that certain recent life events have a positive association with the onset of a first episode of myocardial infarction.